The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of our studies I have spoken of the events in the early development of Western civilization. My aim was to ascertain from these enquiries into the past what is of importance for the present, and with this object in view I propose to pursue the matter in further detail. Our present epoch, as we can see from a cursory glance, is an epoch when only thoughts derived from the Mystery teachings concerning human evolution can exercise effective influence. Now in order to grasp the full implication of this claim we must not only have a clear understanding of many things, but we must also look closely into the needs and shortcomings of contemporary thinking, feeling and willing. We shall then begin to feel that our present epoch has need of new impulses, new thoughts and ideas, and especially of those impulses and thoughts which spring from the depths of the spiritual life and which must become the subject of spiritual-scientific study.

At the present time there is much that fills us with sadness. We must not allow ourselves to be depressed by this mood of sadness, rather should it be something that can prepare us and teach us to work and strive in our present circumstances. I recently came across a publication which I felt would give me the greatest pleasure. The author is one of the few who are receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science and the more is the pity that he was unable to introduce into his writings the fruits of anthroposophical endeavour. The book to which I am referring is The State as Organism, by Rudolf Kjellén (note 1), the Swedish political economist. After reading the book, I must confess that I was left with a feeling of disappointment because I realized that here was a person who, as I said, was receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science, but whose thoughts were still far removed from the thoughts we stand in need of today, thoughts which must be clearly formulated and become concrete reality, especially today, so that they may enter into the evolution of our time. In his book Kjellén undertook to study the State and its organization, but at no time does one feel that he possessed the ideas or the intellectual grasp which could offer the slightest chance of solving his problem. It is a melancholy experience to be disillusioned time and again—but let us not be discouraged, let us rather brace ourselves to meet the challenge of our time.

Before I say a few words on these matters I should like to call your attention once again to those ancient Mysteries which, as you can well imagine from the statements I recently made about the iconoclasm of the (Christian) Church, are known to history today only in a mangled version. It is all the more necessary therefore for our present age that Spiritual Science should bring an understanding of these Mysteries. I mentioned in my last lecture the unprecedented fury with which Christianity in the first centuries destroyed the ancient works of art and how much that was of priceless value was swept away. One cannot take an impartial view of Christianity unless one is prepared to see this destructive side with complete objectivity. And bear in mind at the same time that the various books which deal with this subject present a particular point of view. Everyone today who has received a minimum of education has a picture of the spiritual development of Antiquity, of the spiritual evolution that preceded Christianity. But how different this picture would be if Archbishop Theophilus (note 2) of Alexandria had not burnt in the year 391 seven hundred thousand scrolls which contained vitally important records of Roman, Egyptian, Indian and Greek literature and their cultural life. Just imagine how different would be the picture of Antiquity if these seven hundred thousand scrolls had not been burnt. And from this you will realize how much reliance can be placed on the history of the past which has documentary support—or rather how little reliance!

Let us now follow up the train of thought which I touched on in my lecture yesterday. I pointed out that the forms of Christian worship were in many respects borrowed from the symbols and ceremonies of the ancient pagan Mystery cults, that the forms of these Mystery cults and symbols had been totally eradicated by Christianity in order to conceal their origin. Christianity had made a clean sweep of the pagan forms of worship so that people had no means of knowing what had existed prior to their time and would simply have to accept what the Church offered. Such is the fate of human evolution. We must be prepared to recognize without giving way to pessimism that the course of human evolution is not one of uninterrupted progress.

I also showed in the course of my lecture yesterday that the rites and rituals of the Roman Church owed much to the Eleusinian Mysteries which had been interrupted in their development because Julian had been unable to carry out his intentions; his plan had failed to materialize. But the rites and sacraments of later years owed still more to the Mithras Mysteries. But the spirit of the Mithras Mysteries, that which justified their existence, the source from which they derived their spiritual content, can no longer be investigated. The Church has been careful to remove all traces of it and to close the door to enquiry. Knowledge of this can only be recovered if we strive to come to an understanding of these things through Spiritual Science. Today I propose to touch upon only one aspect of the Mithras Mysteries (note 3). I could of course speak at greater length about the Mithras Mysteries if I had more time at my disposal, but in order to understand them we must first gradually become conversant with their details.

In order to grasp the true spirit of the Mithras Mysteries whose influence spread far into the West of Europe during the first post-Christian centuries, we must be aware that they were based upon a central core of belief (which was right for the world of Antiquity and perfectly justified up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha), that the community or the individual communities, for example, the folk-communities or other groups within the folk-communities consisted not only of the individual units or members, but that, if they were to have any reality, communities must be imbued with a community spirit which has a super-sensible origin. A community was determined not only by the counting of heads, but for the people of Antiquity it represented the external form, the incarnation, if I may use the word in this connection, of a genuinely existing communal spirit. The aim of those who were received into these Mysteries was to participate in this spirit, to share the thoughts of this group-soul; not to insulate themselves from the community by obstinately pursuing their own egoistic thoughts, feelings and volitional impulses, but to live in such a way that they were receptive to the thoughts of the group-soul. In the Mithras Mysteries in particular the priests maintained that this union with the group-soul cannot be achieved if one looks upon a larger community simply as an external manifestation, for thereby that which lies in the community spirit is in the main obscured. The dead, they claimed, are part of our immediate environment and the more we can commune with those who have long been dead the better we shall order our present life. Therefore the longer these souls had been discarnate, the more beneficial they found it to commune with these souls. And in order to be able to commune with the spirit of the ancestor of a tribe, folk-community or family they found it best to make contact with the ancestral soul. It was assumed that this soul develops further after passing through the gates of death and therefore has a deeper insight into the future destiny of the Earth than those who are living on this Earth in their present physical bodies. Thus the whole purpose of these Mysteries was to establish those dramatic representations which would put the neophyte into touch with the souls of those who had long passed through the gates of death.

Those who were admitted to these Mysteries had to undergo a first stage of initiation which was usually characterized by a term borrowed from the bird-species; they were called “Ravens”. A “Raven” was a first-degree initiate. Through the particular Mystery rites, through the potent use of symbols and especially through dramatic performances he became aware not only of the sensible world around him or of what one learns through contact with one's fellow-men, but also of the thoughts of the dead. He acquired a certain capacity which enabled him to recall memories of the dead and the ability to develop it further. The “Raven” was under the solemn obligation to be conscious in the moment, to be alert and responsive to the world around, to be aware of the needs of his fellow-men and to familiarize himself with the phenomena of nature. He who spends his life in day-dreaming, who has no feeling for the indwelling spirit of man and nature was considered to be unsuitable material for reception into the Mysteries. For only the ability to see life around him clearly and in its true perspective fitted him for the task which he had to fulfil in the Mysteries. His task was to participate as far as possible in the changing circumstances of the world in order to widen the range of his experience, to share in the joys and sorrows of contemporary events. He who was unresponsive or indifferent to contemporary events was an unsuitable candidate for initiation. For the first task of the aspirant was to “reproduce”, to re-enact in the Mysteries the experiences gained through participation in the life of the world. In this way these experiences served as a channel of communication with the dead with whom the Initiates sought to make contact. Now you might ask: Would not a high Initiate have been more suitable for this purpose? By no means, for the first-degree Initiates were eminently suited to act as intermediaries because they still possessed all the feelings, shared all the sympathies and antipathies which fitted them for life in the external world, whilst the higher Initiates had more or less purged themselves of those emotions. Therefore these first-degree Initiates were specially suited to experience contemporary life in terms of the ordinary man and to incorporate it into the Mysteries. It was therefore the special task of the “Ravens” to mediate between the external world and those long dead. This tradition has survived in legend. As I have often stated legends as a rule have deep implications. The Kyffhäuser legend tells how Friedrich Barbarossa who had long been dead is instructed by Ravens, or how Charles the Great in the “Salzburg Untersberg” is surrounded by Ravens that brought him news of the outside world. These are echoes of the ancient pagan Mysteries and especially of the Mithras Mysteries.

When the aspirant was ready for the second degree of initiation he became an adept or “occultist” as we should say today. He was then able not only to incorporate into the Mysteries his experience of the sensible world, but also to receive clairvoyantly the communications from the dead, the impulses which the super-sensible world (this world of concrete reality which the dead inhabit) had to impart to the external world. And only when he was fully integrated into the spiritual life which originates in the super-sensible and is related to the external, sensible world was he considered to be adequately prepared for the third degree, and he was now given the opportunity to give practical expression to the impulses he had received in the Mysteries. He was now singled out to become a “warrior”, one who mediates to the sensible world that which must be revealed from the super-sensible world.

But was it not a gross injustice, you may ask, to withhold vital information from the people and to initiate only a select few? You will only understand the reason for this if you accept what I stated at the outset, namely, that the people were dependent upon a group-soul and were content for these select few to act on behalf of the whole community. They did not look upon themselves as separate individuals but as members of a group. It was only possible therefore to pursue this policy of selection at a time when the existence of a group-soul, when the selfless identification with the group was a living reality.

And when, as a “warrior” the initiate had championed for a time the cause of the super-sensible, he was considered fitted to establish smaller groups within the framework of the larger group, smaller communities within larger groups as the need arose. If, in those ancient times, anyone had taken into his head to found an association on his own initiative, he would have been ignored. Nothing would have come of it. In order to establish a union or association the initiate must become a “lion”, as it was termed in the Mithras Mysteries, for that was the fourth degree of initiation. He must first have reinforced his spiritual life through association with those impulses which existed not only amongst the living, but which united the living with the dead. From the fourth degree the initiate rose to a higher degree of initiation which permitted him through certain measures to take over the leadership of an already existing group, a folk-community in which the dead also participated. The eighth, ninth and tenth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha are totally different from those of today. It would never have occurred to anyone to claim the right to choose arbitrarily the leader of their community; such a leader had to be an initiate of the fifth degree. Then, at the next higher degree, the initiate attained to those insights which the Sun Mystery (of which he had recently received intimations) implanted in the human soul. Finally he attained the seventh degree of initiation. I do not propose to enter into the details of these later degrees of initiation, for I simply wished to characterize the progressive development of the initiate who owed to his contact with the spiritual world his capacity to take an active part in community life.

Now you know that the group-soul nature has gradually declined in accordance with the necessary law of human evolution. It was at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that man first developed ego consciousness. This had been prepared for centuries, but the crisis, the critical moment in this development had been reached at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One could no longer assume that the individual had the power to carry the whole community with him, to transfer his feelings and impulses to the entire community in a spirit of altruism.

It would be foolish to imagine that the course of history could have been other than it has been. But sometimes a thought such as the following may prove fruitful: what would have happened if, at the time when the message of Christianity first made its impact on human evolution, the pagan traditions had not been eradicated root and branch, but if historically a certain knowledge (which would be transparent even to those who relied on documents) had been transmitted to posterity? But Christianity was opposed to such a possibility. We will discuss later the reason for this attitude; today I wish simply to register the fact that Christianity was opposed to the transmission of this knowledge. Thus Christianity was confronted by a totally different kind of humanity which was not so much attached to the group-souls as that of former times, a humanity in which the approach to the individual had to be totally different from that of ancient times when the individual was virtually ignored and when men looked to the group-soul for guidance and acted out of the group-soul. Through the fact that Christianity suppressed all documentary evidence of the early centuries the people were kept in ignorance; Christianity in fact consciously fostered ignorance of the epoch when it had first developed. This Christianity borrowed those aspects of the pagan teaching which served its purpose and incorporated them in its traditions and dogmas and especially in its cults or religious ceremonies and then effaced all traces of the origin of these cults. The ancient cults have a deep symbolic meaning, but Christianity gave them a different interpretation. The performance of cult acts or ceremonies was still a familiar sight, but the source of the primeval wisdom from which they derived was concealed from the people.

Take for example the bishop's mitre of the eighth century. This mitre was embroidered with swastikas which were arranged in different patterns. The swastika which was originally the Crux Gammata dates back to the earliest Mysteries, to the ancient times when man was able to observe the activity of the “lotus flowers” in the human etheric and astral organism, how that which was active in the lotus flower was one of the chief manifestations of the etheric and astral forces. The bishop wore the swastika as a symbol of his authority, but its significance was lost and it had become a dead symbol. All traces of its origin had been eradicated. What history tells us of the origin of such symbols is only dry bones. Only through Spiritual Science can we rediscover the living spiritual element in these things.

Now I said earlier that people were consciously kept in ignorance, but the time has now come to dispel this ignorance. And over the years I think that I have said enough and in a variety of ways to show that it is essential at the present time to be alive and alert to these questions. For our epoch is an epoch in which the necessary period of darkness has run its course and when the light of spiritual life must dawn again. It is devoutly to be wished that as many as possible should feel in their hearts that this spiritual light is a necessity for our time and that the failures and endless sufferings of our time are connected with all these questions. We shall realize that superficial judgements are inadequate when we come to speak of the causes of our present situation. So long as we speak only from a superficial standpoint we shall be unable to develop thoughts or impulses which are sufficiently potent to dispel the ignorance which is the source of our attendant ills. It is indeed remarkable how mankind today—but this need not depress us, rather should it encourage us to observe and understand our present condition—is unwilling to face up to the situation because, for the most part, man is as yet unable to perceive what is really necessary for our evolution. It is heartbreaking to see what Nietzsche felt about the prevailing darkness and confusion of our age, a man who suffered deeply from, and was driven to the point of madness by the chaos and confusion of the second half of the nineteenth century. We shall not come to terms with a personality such as Friedrich Nietzsche if we look upon him as someone whom one blindly follows, as so many have done. For he answered these blind followers in the original prelude to the “Gay Science”.

I am sufficient unto myself
I owe allegiance to none,
And I laugh at every master
Who cannot laugh at himself.

That is also the underlying mood of the whole of “Thus spake Zarathustra”. But this did not prevent Nietzsche from being surrounded by many who were merely hangers-on. They, in any case, have nothing positive to contribute to our present situation. But the other extremists—and between these two groups can be found every shade of opinion—are equally of no help, for they say that although Nietzsche had many creative ideas, he ultimately lost his reason and so can be safely ignored. Friedrich Nietzsche is a strange phenomenon; one need not be his willing slave, yet the fact remains that even in his period of mental sickness he was acutely sensitive to the darkness and chaos of the age.

Indeed the account of the distress which Nietzsche suffered in his time provides us with a good yardstick with which to measure the difficulties of our own time. I propose to read two passages from Nietzsche's posthumous writings: “The Will to Power; the Transvaluation of all Values” (note 4) which was written at a time when his mind was unhinged, passages which could have been written today with a wholly different intent than Nietzsche's and could have been written to expose the deeper underlying cause of our present situation. Nietzsche wrote:

“What I am about to relate is the history of the next two centuries. I shall describe what is foreshadowed and from which there is no escape—the triumph of nihilism. This history can be written now, for necessity is already at work here. This future is already presaged by a hundred different omens; this destiny announces its presence everywhere; for the music of tomorrow all ears are pricked. The whole of European culture is slowly moving towards catastrophe in an agony of suspense which increases from decade to decade—restless, violent, precipitate like a river in spate hastening to its ocean bed, and which refuses to reflect and even dreads reflection.”

Judge then of your own reactions in the light of these words from the pen of a man of rare sensitivity at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century and compare these words with another passage which I will now read to you and which vividly portrays the deep distress he felt and which everyone can experience himself.

“My friends, we had a hard time in our youth; we even suffered from youth as if it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we are born—an age of great internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration, that is to say a sense of insecurity, is peculiar to our age; nothing stands on solid ground or on sound faith or belief. People live for the morrow, because the day after tomorrow is uncertain. Our path is slippery and dangerous and the ice that still bears us has become precariously thin: we all feel the mild and ominous breath of the thaw-wind. Within a short space of time the path we are treading will never be able to know the footsteps of man again.”

It is clear that these sentiments were born of a profound insight into the realities of the time. He who would understand the age in which we live and especially the task that faces the individual, he who can look beyond the moment and the day will himself feel what is expressed in those passages and will perhaps say: Nietzsche's mental derangement prevented him from adopting a critical attitude to the ideas which arose in him. None the less these ideas stemmed from an acute sensitivity to the immediate realities of the present age. Perhaps we shall one day draw a comparison between Nietzsche's response to his age and the customary pronouncements of “experts” which do not even touch the fringe of the causes which lie at the root of our present difficult times. We shall then change our attitude and see the necessity for Spiritual Science today. People are unwilling to listen to the teachings of Spiritual Science; but in saying this I have no wish to imply reproach. Far be it from me to attach blame to anyone. The people to whom I am referring are for the most part those for whom I feel great respect and who, in my opinion, would be the first to take to Spiritual Science. I simply wish to point out how difficult it is for the individual to be receptive to Spiritual Science if he is impervious to spiritual appeal, if he succumbs entirely to the Zeitgeist, to the superficial trends of the time. One must be fully aware of this.

At this juncture I can now revert to Kjellen's book, The State as Organism. It is a curious book because the author strives with every fibre of his being to clarify the question: What is the State in reality?—and because he does not believe in the capacity of man's ideas and concepts to understand this question. It is true that the book contains many fine things which have been praised by contemporary critics, but the author has not the slightest idea of the deeper layers of understanding and knowledge which are necessary in order to rescue mankind from its present predicament. I have only time to refer to the central theme of his book. Kjellen raises the question: What is the relation of the individual to the State? And in attempting to answer this question he immediately came up against a difficulty. He wished to depict the State as a reality, as an integrated whole, in other words, as an organism primarily. Many have already described the State as an organism and are then always faced with the question: an organism consists of cells, what then are the cells of the State? Clearly the individual members of the State!—And on the whole Kjellen also shared this view: the State is an organism as the human or animal organism is an organism, and just as the human organism consists of individual cells, so too the State consists of individual cells, of human beings who are the cells of the State.

One can hardly imagine a more misguided or misleading analogy. If we follow up the analogy we shall never arrive at a clear understanding of man. Why is this? The cells of the human organism are juxtaposed, and this juxtaposition has a special significance. The whole structure of the human organism depends upon this juxtaposition. In the organism of the State the individual units or members are not contiguous like the individual cells in the human or animal organism. That is out of the question. In the totality of the State the human personality is something wholly different from the cells in the organism. And even if at a pinch we compare the State with an organism we must realize that we and the whole of political science are sorely mistaken if we overlook the fact that the individual is not a cell; only the productive element in man can sustain the State, whilst the organism is an aggregate of cells and it is they which determine its functioning. Therefore the present State in which the group-soul is no longer the same as in ancient times can only progress through the endeavour or initiative of the single individual. This cannot be compared with the function of the cells. As a rule it is immaterial what we choose to compare, but if we make a comparison between two objects they must be related objects. As a rule it is accepted that analogies are valid to some extent, but they should not be so far fetched as Kjellén's analogy. There is no objection to his comparing the State with an organism; one could equally well compare it with a machine (there is no harm in that) or even with a penknife—doubtless points of similarity can be found here too—but, if the comparison is carried through, it must be consistent. But people are not sufficiently familiar with the principles of logic to be aware of this.

Now Kjellén is perfectly entitled to compare the State with an organism if he so wishes. But if he wishes to make this comparison he must look for the right cells. But they cannot be found because the State has no cells! If we think about the matter concretely the analogy breaks down. I simply wish to point out that one can only carry this analogy through if one thinks in an abstract way like Kjellen. The moment one thinks realistically, one demurs, because the idea has no roots in reality. We find that the State has no cells. On the other hand we discover that the individual States can perhaps be compared to cells and that the sum total of States on Earth can be compared to an organism. A fruitful idea then occurs to us. But first we must answer the question: what kind of organism? Where can one find something comparable in the kingdom of nature where the cells fit into each other in the same way as the individual “State cells” fit into the entire organism of the Earth? Pursuing this idea we find that we can only compare the entire Earth organism with a plant organism, not with an animal organism and still less with a human organism. Whilst natural science is only concerned with the inorganic, with the mineral kingdom, political science must be founded on a higher order of ideas, on the ideas of the plant kingdom. We must look to neither the animal nor the human kingdom and we must free ourselves from mineralized thinking, dead thought forms to which the scientists are so firmly attached. They cannot rise to the higher order of ideas embodied in the plant kingdom, but apply laws of the mineral kingdom to the State and call it political science.

In order to arrive at this fruitful conception mentioned above our whole thinking must be rooted in Spiritual Science. We shall then be able to satisfy ourselves that the whole being of man by virtue of his individuality is far superior to the State, he penetrates into the spiritual world where the State cannot enter. If therefore you compare the State with an organism and the individual member of the State with the cells, then, if you think realistically, you will arrive at the idea of an organism consisting of individual cells, but the cells would everywhere extend beyond the epidermis. You would have an organism with its cells which extends beyond the epidermis; the cells would develop independently of the organism and would be self-contained. You would therefore have to picture the organism as if “living bristles” which felt themselves to be individuals were everywhere projecting beyond the epidermis. Living thinking thus brings us into touch with reality, and shows us the impossible difficulties that must face us if we wish to grasp any idea that is to be fruitful. It is not surprising therefore that ideas which are not impregnated with Spiritual Science have not the capacity to sustain us in coping with our present situation. For how can one reduce to order the chaos in the world if one has no idea of its cause? No matter how many Wilsonian manifestos are issued by all kinds of international organizations or associations and the like, so long as they have no roots in reality, they are so much empty talk. Hence the many proposals which are put forward today are a sheer waste of time.

Here is an example which demonstrates how imperative it is that our present age should be permeated with the impulses of Spiritual Science. It is the tragedy of our time that it is powerless to develop ideas which could reconcile and control the organic life of the State. Hence everything is in a state of chaos. But it must now be clear to you where the deeper causes of this chaos are to be sought. And it is not surprising therefore that books such as Kjellen's The State as Organism conclude in the most remarkable manner. We are now living in an age when everybody is wondering what is to be done so that men may once again live in harmony, when with every week they are increasingly determined to live in enmity and to slaughter each other. How are they to be brought together again? But the science which deals with the question of how men are once again to develop social relationships within the State concludes in Kjellen's case with these words: “This must be the conclusion of our enquiry into the State as organism. We have seen that for compelling reasons the State of today had made little progress in this direction and has not yet become fully aware that this is its function. None the less we believe in a higher form of State which recognizes a more clearly defined rational purpose and which will make determined efforts to achieve this goal.”

That is the concluding passage in his book; but we do not know, we have no idea what will come of it. Such are the findings of a painstaking and conscientious thinking that is so caught up in the stream of contemporary thought that it overlooks the essentials. One must face these problems squarely; for the impulse, the desire to gain insight into these problems only arises when we face them squarely, when we know what are the driving forces in our present age.

Even without looking far beneath the surface we perceive today an urge towards a kind of “socialization”, I do not mean towards socialism, but towards “socialization” of the Earth organism. But socialization—because it must be conscious, and not proceed from the unconscious as in the last two thousand years—socialization, reorientation or reorganization, is only possible if we understand the nature of man, if we learn to know once again the being of man—for that was the object of the ancient Mysteries. Socialization applies to the physical plane. But it is impossible to establish a social order if one ignores the fact that on the physical plane are to be found not only physical men, but men endowed with soul and spirit. Nothing can be achieved if we think of man only in physical terms. You may socialize, you may order social life in accordance with contemporary ideas, and within twenty years everything will be in chaos again if you ignore the fact that man is not only the physical being known to natural science, but a being endowed with soul and spirit. For soul and spirit are active agents and exercise a powerful influence. We may ignore their existence in our ideas and representations, but we cannot abolish them. If the soul is to inhabit a physical body which participates in a social order appropriate to our time it must have freedom of thought and opinion. Socialization cannot be realized without freedom of thought. And socialization and freedom of thought cannot be realized unless the spirit is rooted in the spiritual world itself.

Freedom of thought as an attitude of mind or way of thinking, pneumatology, spiritual maturity and spiritual science—as scientific foundation of all ordinances and directives—these are inseparably linked. We can only discover through spiritual science how these things are related to man and how they can he realized practically in the social order. Freedom of thought, that is, an attitude to one's neighbour that fully recognizes his right to freedom of thought, cannot be realized unless we accept the principle of reincarnation, for otherwise we look upon man as an abstraction. We shall never see him in the right light unless we look upon him as the result of repeated lives on Earth. The whole question of reincarnation must be examined in connection with the question of freedom of thought and opinion. The life of man will be impossible in the future unless the inner life of the individual can be rooted in the life of the spirit. I am not suggesting that he must become clairvoyant, though this will certainly occur in individual cases, but I maintain that he must be firmly rooted in the life of the spirit. I have often explained that this is perfectly possible without becoming clairvoyant. If we look around a little we shall find where the major hindrances lie and in what direction we must look for the source of these obstacles. It is not that people are unwilling to search for the truth—and as I have said, I do not wish to reprove or to criticize—but they erect psychic barriers and are the victims of their many inhibitions.

Often an isolated instance is so instructive that we are able to gain a real understanding of many contemporary phenomena from these symptoms. There is one symptom peculiar to our own time which is most remarkable. It is curious how people who are normally so brave and courageous today, are terrified when they hear that the claims of spiritual knowledge are to be recognized. They are bewildered. I have often told you that I noticed that many who had attended one or two lectures were not seen again for some time. Meeting them in the street I asked why they had never turned up again. “I dare not”, came the reply. “I am afraid you might convince me.” They find such a possibility dangerous and disturbing and are not prepared to expose themselves to the risk. I could cite many other examples of a similar kind from my own experience, but I prefer to give examples from the wider field of public life.

A short time ago I spoke here of Hermann Bahr (note 5) who recently gave a lecture here in Berlin entitled “The Ideas of 1914”. I pointed out how he attempted—you need only read his last novel Himmelfahrt—not only to move a little in the direction of Spiritual Science, but he even tried in his later years to arrive at an inner understanding of Goethe, that is, to follow the path which I would recommend to those who wish to provide themselves with a sound background for their introduction to Spiritual Science. There are very many today who would like to speak of the spirit once again, who would welcome any and every opportunity to revive knowledge of the spirit. I do not wish to lecture or criticize, least of all a person such as Hermann Bahr for whom I feel great affection. Even if it is far from our intention to sermonize, we none the less have the strange feeling that an outlook such as that of Hermann Bahr has contributed to the corruption of thought and has infected human thinking with original sin.

Now in his Berlin lecture Hermann Bahr expressed many fine and admirable sentiments; but many astonishing things come to light. He began by saying that this war had taught us something completely new. It had taught us to integrate the individual once again into the community in the right way, to sacrifice our individualism, our ego centricity for the benefit of the whole. This war has taught us, he said, to make a clean sweep of the past with its antiquated ideas and to fill our inner life with something completely new. And he proceeded to describe the inestimable benefits this war has brought us. I have no wish to criticize, quite the reverse. But after a lengthy disquisition on how the war has transformed us all, how we shall be completely` changed through the war, it is strange to come upon the concluding passage: “Man always cherishes hope of a better future, but himself remains incorrigible. Even the war will leave us much as we are.” As I said before, I have no wish to criticize, but I cannot help being touched by these high hopes. These people are motivated by the best of intentions; they wish to find once again the path to the spiritual. And Bahr therefore emphasized that we had relied too much upon the individual; we had practised the cult of individualism far too long. We must learn once again to surrender to the whole. Those who belong to a nation have learned to merge with the nation, to sacrifice their separativeness. And nations too, he believes, are only totalities of individual characteristics, parts of a greater whole which will later emerge. Thus Bahr sometimes betrays, and especially in this lecture, the paths he none the less follows in order to arrive at the spirit. Sometimes he gives only vague indications, but these indications are most revealing. Ring out the old, the past is dead, is his motto. The Aufklärung wished to found everything on a basis of reason; but all to no purpose, everything has ended in chaos. We must find something that brings us in touch with Reality and saves us from chaos. And in this context Bahr once again makes astonishing revelations:

“Perhaps nations and individuals would then have learned what is most difficult for them to learn—to grant to others the right to individuality that each individual claims for himself, for, in the final analysis, the individuality of others is the precondition of one's own. If we were all alike there would be no distinguishing features. And they would have learned that just as each individual with his distinctive gifts in his own particular field is necessary to the nation, in order through his self-fulfilment to sustain the nation and thus at the same time to be self-sufficient and also to serve the nation, so too the universality of mankind, the common membership of all mankind that reaches to the Divine grows out of nations and transcends nations.”

That is a hint, if not a broad hint, at least it is a clear hint. People are striving to find the way to God, but are unwilling to follow the path that is appropriate to our time. They are looking therefore for a different path which already exists, but it never occurs to them that this traditional path was indeed effective up to 1914 and now, in order to obviate its consequences, they want to return to it again!

The symptoms manifested here are, I think, deserving of quiet examination, for these are the views not of a single individual, but of a vast number of people who feel and think in this way. A book by Max Scheler (note 6) recently appeared with the title Der Genius des Krieges and der deutsche Krieg. It is a good book and I can safely recommend it. Bahr too thinks highly of it. He is a man of taste and well informed and has every reason to commend it. But he also wishes to publicize the book and proposes to write a highly favourable review, a puff to boost Scheler. He wonders how best to proceed. To scandalize the public is not the right approach; some other way must be found to attract their attention. What was he to do? Now Hermann Bahr is a very sincere and honest man and leaves no doubt as to what he would do in such a case. In his article on Scheler he begins by saying: Scheler has written many articles to show how we could escape from our present predicament. Scheler caught the public eye. But, says Bahr, people today do not approve of being told whom to read; it goes against the grain. And so Hermann Bahr characterizes Scheler in the following way: “People were curious about him and yet rather suspicious of him; we Germans want to know above all where we stand in relation to an author. We do not like indefinition.”

Let us have therefore a clear picture. This is not achieved by reading books and accepting their arguments; something more is needed. Bahr now gives a further hint: “Even the Catholics preferred to reserve judgement (on Scheler) lest they should be disappointed. His idiom displeased them. For every mental climate creates in the course of time its own native idiom which gives a particular flavour and meaning to words of common usage. In this way one recognizes who `belongs’, with the result that ultimately one pays less attention to what is said than to how it is said.”

Hermann Bahr decided to announce Scheler with a flourish of trumpets. Now, like Bahr himself, Scheler hints at those remarkable catholicizing endeavours—always tentatively at first, he never commits himself immediately. Now according to Bahr, Scheler does not speak like a genuine Catholic. But Catholics want to know where they stand in relation to Scheler, and especially Bahr himself since he intends to puff Scheler in the Catholic periodical “Hochland”. After all, people must know that Scheler can be safely recommended to Catholics. They do not like to be left in the dark, they want to know the truth.

And this is the crux of the matter. People will know where they stand if they are told that it is perfectly safe for Catholics to read Scheler! The fact that he is exceptionally clever and witty is of no consequence; Catholics have no objection to that. Bahr, however, proposes to hold up Scheler as an outstanding personality in order to boost his importance, but at the same time he does not wish to offend people. First of all he bewails the fact that mankind has become empty and vapid, that man has lost all connection with the spirit; but he must find his way back to the spirit once again. I quote a few passages from Hermann Bahr on Scheler which touch upon this subject:

“Reason broke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life.”

Hermann Bahr lacks the courage to say: reason must now seek contact with the spiritual world. He therefore says: reason must look to the Church once again.

“Reason bloke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life. It (reason) had scarcely begun to take the first steps in this direction than it took fright and lost confidence in itself. This self-awareness of reason, the consciousness of its boundaries, of the limitations of its own power when bereft of the divine afflatus, began with Kant. He recognized that reason of itself cannot achieve that which by its very nature it is constrained to will; it cannot achieve the goal it has set itself. He called a halt to reason at the very moment where it promised to be fruitful. Kant set boundaries to reason, but his disciples extended these boundaries and each went his own way. Ultimately godless reason had no other choice but to abdicate. It realized finally that it can know nothing. It searched for truth so long until it discovered that either truth was non-existent or that there was no truth to which man could attain.”

Enough has now been said in defence of the modern outlook and all those fine sentiments about the “boundaries of knowledge.”

“Since that time we have lived without truth, believing there is no truth. We continued to live however as if truth must none the less exist. In fact, in order to live we had to live by denying our reason. And so we preferred to abandon reason completely. We committed intellectual suicide. Soon man was regarded simply as a bundle of impulses. He was proud of his dehumanisation. And the consequence was 1914.”

And so Hermann Bahr praises Scheler because of his Catholicizing bent. Then he proceeds to give a somewhat distorted picture of Goethe, for he had been at pains for some time to depict him as a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. And then goes on to say:

“The modern scientist denied his spiritual birthright. Science abandoned presuppositions. Reason no longer derived from the divine the ‘impulse’ which is imperative for its effectiveness. What other path was open to it? None, save the appeal to the instincts. The man without established values was suspended over an abyss. And the result was—1914.”

“If we are to build afresh it must be from totally new foundations. If we are to bring about a spiritual renewal we must make a complete break with the past. It would be presumptuous to aim at the immediate spiritual rehabilitation of Europe. We must first rehabilitate man and restore his lost innocence; he must become aware once again that he is a member of the spiritual world. Freedom, individuality, dignity, morality, science and art have vanished from the world since faith, hope and love are no more. And only faith, hope and love can restore them. We have no other choice, either the end of the world or—omnia instaurare in Christo” (to renew all things in Christ).

But this “omnia instaurare in Christo” does not imply a search for the spirit, a move towards the investigation or exploration of the spirit, but the inclusion of the nations in the Catholic fold. How is it, Bahr asks, that men are able to think for themselves and yet are able to remain good Catholics? We must look to those who are suited to the present age. And Scheler fits the bill for he is not such a fool as to speak for example of an evolution into the spiritual world, or to specify a particular spiritual teaching. He is not such a fool as to commit himself openly, as is the case with those who speak of the spirit and then suggest: the rest will he added unto you if you enter the Church, i.e. the Catholic Church—for that is implied both by Bahr and Schelerwhich in their opinion is sufficiently all-embracing. In this way conflicting opinions can be reconciled under the umbrella of the Church. None the less people today want to think for themselves and Scheler adapts himself to their thoughts. Indeed, Bahr believes that Scheler in this respect is a master of giving people what they want:

“Scheler attracts attention because he does not gesticulate or raise his voice. Involuntarily people ask who can it be who appears to be so sure of his influence that he does not feel it necessary to raise his voice. It is a favourite device of seasoned orators to open on a quiet note and thus command the silent attention of the audience; the orator must also have the power to hold them spellbound. Scheler can do this in masterly fashion. He so captivates his listener that the listener is unaware whither he is being led and suddenly finds himself at a destination that was wholly unforeseen. Starting from unexpected propositions which the listener innocently accepts, Scheler forces him imperceptibly to conclusions which he would have actively resisted had he been in any way forewarned. In this respect Scheler's art of persuasion is unrivalled. He is a born educator; I know of no one who can lead us so easily but firmly to the truth.”

Indeed it is a special art to be able to take people by surprise in this way. First one makes statements that are unexceptionable; then the argument proceeds slowly and leads to a conclusion at which the audience would have demurred had they been aware of it from the start. How does one account for this, Bahr asks, and what must be done in order to act with the right intentions? In this review of Scheler Bahr gives his honest and candid opinion:

“The question now is whether the average German can grasp the magnitude of the moment and all that it portends. He is animated by the best of intentions, but still fondly imagines that belief is no longer possible for modern man since it has been scientifically refuted. He does not suspect that this `science or dogma of unbelief’ has itself long been refuted scientifically. He knows nothing of the quiet preparatory work in this direction of the outstanding German philosophers of our time—Lotze, Franz Brentano, Dilthey, Eucken, and Husserl.” (note 7).

I now beg you to give special attention to the following:

“The ordinary person still hears in the last faint echo of the Münchausen posthorn, the latest aberration which, unbeknown to him, has already been refuted. Amidst this confusion a calm clear voice will soon be heard which gives no suspicion of the sentimental day dreaming, romanticism or mysticism which fills the ordinary person with unholy dread. And precisely because Scheler pleads the cause of a recovery of faith straightforwardly and unemotionally and in the customary jargon of the ’cultivated man of our time’, he is the man we need today.”

So now we know! Now we know why Bahr approves of Scheler. He (Scheler) cannot be accused of being a visionary or a mystic, for the average German is mortally afraid of them. And woe betide anyone who does not respect this fear, for if he were take it into his head to banish this fear or recognize the need to struggle against it, it would need more than a little courage to venture on such an undertaking.

Because I have great respect and affection for Hermann Bahr I would like to show that he is typical of those who find great difficulty in accepting a spiritual teaching of which our time stands in need. But there is promise of hope only if we overcome that terrible fear, if we have the courage to acknowledge that Spiritual Science is not an idle fancy, that the greatest clarity of thought is called for if we wish to make the right approach to Spiritual Science, for there is little evidence of clear thinking in the few examples which I have quoted to you today from Hermann Bahr and other contemporary writers. Spiritual courage is called for if we wish to develop ideas that are strong and effective. We need not go all the way with Nietzsche, nor need we wholly share the view he expresses in a passage which none the less may attract our attention; but when this sensitive spirit, stimulated perhaps by his illness, expresses his boldest and most courageous opinions we must nevertheless go along with him. The fear of being misunderstood must not deter us. It would he the greatest calamity that could befall us today if we were to be afraid of being misunderstood. We must sometimes perhaps pass judgements like the following judgement of Nietzsche, even though it may not be sound in every detail; that is not important. In his treatise “On the History of Christianity” he wrote:

“Christianity as a historical reality must not be confused with that one root which its name recalls: the other roots from which it has sprung are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of language to associate such manifestations of decay and such monstrosities as the ‘Christian Church’, ‘Christian belief’ and ‘Christian life’ with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny?—Everything which today is called Christian!”

Although this is perhaps an extreme view, Nietzsche nevertheless touched upon something which has a certain truth; but he expressed it somewhat radically. It is true to the extent that one could say: What would Christ most vigorously condemn if He were to appear in our midst today? Most probably what the majority of people call “Christian” today, and much else besides, which I will discuss in our lecture on Tuesday next.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Rudolf Kjellen (1864–1922), Swedish historian, professor at Upsala. Belonged to the school of “geopolitics”, the doctrine of the interaction of geographical and political factors in the constitution and development of States.

Note 2. Theophilus. Patriarch of Alexandria 385–412. He condemned Origen at the Synod of Alexandria 408. “He deprived the pagans of Alexandria of a temple ... and apparently destroyed other temples. A riot ensued and a number of Christians were slain. With Theophilus at their head the Christians retaliated by destroying the celebrated temple of Serapis on the ruins of which the patriarch erected a church.” (Quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XIV, 1913.)

Note 3. Mithras Initiation. According to R. J. Vermaseren, in Mithras, the Secret God (Chatto & Windus, 1963) he who had acquired sufficient knowledge “could gain successively the title of Raven (Corax), Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Courier of the Sun (Heliodromus) and Father (Pater)”. This book is a classic in the study of Mithraism. There are figures in the text and illustrations.

Note 4. Nietzsche. “The Will to Power and the Transvaluation of all Values.” According to P. Tillich “will” here means “the universal dynamics of all life processes and ‘power’ the affirmation of one's own individual existence. It is the power of the best.” The transvaluation of all values implies that since “God is dead”, i.e. that traditional and ethical values no longer stem from belief in a transcendent authority, man himself must re-create them. The “Übermensch” must be developed. He is the “superior” man physically, mentally and spiritually, the man of self-discipline who has learned to command and obey, to accept responsibility, whose watchword is duty and honour. It is an aristocratic ideal. According to Nietzsche his antitype is mass man, the “herd man” who has succumbed to ideologies that promise happiness and well-being. He is timid, bored, conformist, opposed to tradition and culture. This “slave morality” is utilitarian and keeps only its own advantage in view and prepares the ochlocracy, the “nihilism” towards which we are moving (p. 13 in the English text).

Note 5. Hermann Bahr (1863–1934). Austrian dramatist, novelist and essayist. In his later years he returned to the Church and represented the Catholic school of thought, cf. his novel Himmelfahrt.

Note 6. Max Scheler (1874–1928). Professor of Philosophy at Cologne, 1920–21. His writings have a strong theistic flavour and he was a subtle advocate of Catholicism.

Note 7. Lotze (1817–81), Dilthey (1833–1911), R. Eucken (1846–1929), Husserl (1859–1938) were philosophers of idealism. They were opposed to the mechanistic scientific philosophy of the age and pleaded the cause of ethical idealism.

It might seem at first sight that in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha mankind had not been touched by the light of spiritual illumination; that this was the normal condition of mankind and increasingly so up to the present day. This is not so, however. If we wish to see these things in perspective we must distinguish between the prevailing spirit of mankind and that which occurs here and there in the life of mankind and may play a decisive part in the different spheres of life. It would be most discouraging for many today to be told of the existence of a spiritual world, but that the doors to this world were closed to them. And there are many at the present time who have come to this depressing conclusion. The reason for this is not far to seek. Where there is a clear possibility of gaining insight into the spiritual world they refuse to commit themselves unreservedly. Nor have they the courage to pass an objective judgement on this issue. It may seem therefore—but in reality it is only apparently so—that today we are far removed from those early times when the spiritual world was revealed to the whole of mankind through atavistic clairvoyance, or from the later times when the few could find access to the spirit through initiation into the Mysteries. We must draw together certain strands which link early periods of human evolution with the present if we wish to arrive at a full understanding of the mystery of man's destiny and especially of those phenomena we have discussed in these lectures in connection with the nature of the Mysteries. I should like to select an example from recent times which is accessible to all and which will lend encouragement to those who are faced with the decision of choosing paths leading to the spiritual world. From the many examples at our disposal I would like to take an example which demonstrates at the same time how these phenomena are none the less misjudged from the materialistic point of view of the present day—and will also be misjudged in the immediate future.

No doubt you have all heard of Otto Ludwig (note 1) who was born in 1813, in the same year as Hebbel and Richard Wagner. Otto Ludwig was not only a poet—some may feel perhaps that he was not in the front rank of poets, but that does not concern us at the moment—but he was a man given to introspection, who sought self-knowledge and who succeeded in penetrating into the inner life which is veiled from the majority today. Otto Ludwig describes very beautifully what he experiences in the process of poetic composition or when he reads the poetry of others and surrenders to its appeal. He then realizes that he does not read or compose like other men, but that an extraordinary ferment is set up within him. And Otto Ludwig gives a beautiful description of this in a passage I will now read to you because it reveals a piece of self-knowledge of a typically modern man who, in the course of this self-revelation, speaks of things which our present materialistic age regards as the wildest fantasy. But Otto Ludwig was no visionary or idle dreamer. By nature he was perhaps introspective, but if we take into consideration the information we have about his life, we shall find that alongside this introspective tendency there was something eminently sane and balanced in his make-up. He describes his own creative experience and his response to the poetry of others in these words:

“I experience first of all a musical impression which is transformed into colour (note 2). Then I see one or more figures in various postures executing formalized gestures, singly or facing each other, the whole resembling a copper engraving on parchment, coloured paper or, more precisely, like a marble statue or sculptural group on which the sun falls through a veil of that colour. I experience this colour phenomenon after reading poetry which has stirred me deeply. If I put myself in the mood which Goethe's poetry evokes I see a deep golden yellow passing over into golden brown. When I read Schiller I experience a brilliant crimson; with Shakespeare every scene is a particular nuance of the particular colour I associate with the whole drama. Strangely enough the image or the group evoked is not usually a representation of the denouement, sometimes it is only a characteristic figure in some moving posture which is immediately joined by a succession of other figures. At first I know nothing of the plot or content of the drama, but ever fresh miming figures, seemingly three-dimensional, are rapidly added, now from the beginning, now from the end of the initial dramatic situation until I experience the whole drama complete with all its scenes. The whole passes before me in rapid succession; meanwhile I remain passive and a kind of physical anxiety grips me. I can then reproduce at will the content of the individual scenes as they unfold; but I find it impossible to condense the narrative content into a brief account. Next the gestures are accompanied by speech. I write down what I can recall, but, once the mood forsakes me, what I have noted down becomes a dead letter. Then I proceed to fill in the gaps in the dialogue, but for this purpose I must cast a critical eye over what I have written.”

Here then we have the remarkable case of a man who experiences crimson-red on reading Schiller, or golden yellow passing over into golden brown on reading the dramas or poems of Goethe, who experiences a colour sensation with every drama of Shakespeare; who, when he composes or reads a poem sees figures like those of a copper engraving printed on a parchment-coloured background, or three-dimensional miming figures on which the sun falls through a veil which diffuses the light that evokes the total mood.

Now we must understand this experience in the correct way. It is not yet a clairvoyant perception, but it is a step towards spiritual vision. In order to have a right understanding of this mood from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we must realize that Otto Ludwig was no stranger to spiritual vision. For if he were to advance further along this path he would not only experience these visions, but, just as physical objects are visible to the physical eye, spiritual beings would be visible to his spiritual eye and he would know them as an inner experience. Just as we see scattered light when we gently rub our eyes in the dark, light that seemingly radiates from the eye and fills the room, so from his inner life Ludwig radiates impressions of colour and tone. As he rightly says, he experiences them first as musical impressions. He does not exploit them in order to gain spiritual insight; but we perceive that he is mature enough spiritually to embark on the path leading to the spiritual world.

It is no longer possible to deny that there exist people who are aware that “spiritual vision” is a reality, the vision that the neophytes learned to develop in the Mysteries in the way described in earlier lectures. For the real purpose of these ceremonies was primarily to call attention to the eye of the soul, to awaken man to the fact of its existence. That the phenomena which I have just described to you are not rightly understood today is evident from the observations of Gustav Freytag (note 3). When speaking of Otto Ludwig, he says:

“The work of this writer and indeed his whole makeup, was akin to that of an epic poet of the time when, in the early dawn of nations, the poetic figures were visioned by the poet as living Imaginations imbued with colour and sound.”

This statement is perfectly correct, but has nothing to do with poetic composition. For the experiences of Otto Ludwig were not only shared by poets in ancient times, but by all men, and were shared in later times by those who had been initiated into the Mysteries irrespective of whether they were poets or not. These experiences have therefore no connection with poetic invention. Behind the barrier which the materialist of today has erected in his own soul there is to be found that which Otto Ludwig describes. It is found not only in the poet, but in every man today. The fact that he was a poet has nothing to do with the phenomenon of poetic vision, but is something that accompanies it. One may be a far greater poet than Otto Ludwig and that which one is able to describe may remain entirely in the subconscious. It is present in the substratum of the subconscious, but need not manifest itself. For poetry, indeed art as a whole today, is something other than the conscious fashioning of clairvoyant impressions.

I quote the case of Otto Ludwig as an example of a man—and men of his type are by no means rare today—who stands on the threshold of the spiritual world. If one practises the exercises given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, that which already exists in the soul is raised into consciousness, so that one learns to use it or to apply it consciously. It is important to bear this in mind. The problem is not so much that it is difficult to reach the hidden depths of the soul, but that people today lack the courage to embark upon a spiritual training; and that for the most part those who would willingly do so from a heartfelt need to know and to understand, none the less feel constrained to admit this need, albeit somewhat shamefacedly in their own intimate circle, but conceal it when they later find themselves in the company of contemporary intellectuals. What we should characterize today as the right path, perhaps because we live in the Michael Age since 1879, need not of necessity be regarded as the only right path. Looking back over the recent past it is possible that many may have attained a high degree of clairvoyance, genuine clairvoyance; there is no need for us therefore either to recognize fully or to accept this clairvoyance unreservedly, nor to regard it as something dangerous and to be rejected.

There are certainly many factors which for some time have undermined our courage to accept the validity of clairvoyance, and for this reason the assessment of Swedenborg (who has often been mentioned in your circle) has been so strange. He could act as a stimulus to many, in that people might see in him an individuality who had lifted to some extent the veils that concealed the spiritual world. Swedenborg had developed a high degree of Imaginative cognition which is a necessity for all who would penetrate to the spiritual world. It was indispensable to him; it was simply a kind of transition to higher stages of knowledge. And it was especially his clairvoyant sense for Imaginative cognition that he had developed. But precisely because this Imaginative cognition was stirring and pulsating in him he was able to make observations about the relations between the spiritual world and the phenomenal world, observations which are highly significant for those who seek to clarify their ideas about clairvoyance by studying the development of particular personalities. I should like to take Swedenborg as an example in order to illustrate how he came to self-understanding, how he thought and felt in order to keep his inner life attuned to the spiritual world. He was not motivated by egoism in his search for the spirit. He was already fifty-five years old when the doors of the spiritual world were opened to him (note 4). He was therefore a man of ripe experience; he had received a sound scientific training and had long been active in this field. The most important scientific works of Swedenborg have just been published in many volumes by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and they contain material that may well determine the course of science for many years to come. But people today have learned the trick of recognizing a man such as Swedenborg (who was the leading scientist of his day) only in so far as they agree with him; otherwise they label him a fool. And they perform this trick with consummate skill. They attach no importance to the fact that from the age of fifty-five Swedenborg bears witness to the reality of the spiritual world—a man whose scientific achievement not only compares favourably with that of others—in itself no mean feat—but who, as a scientist, stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

Swedenborg was particularly interested in the question of the interaction of soul and body. After his spiritual enlightenment he wrote a superb treatise on this subject. The content was approximately as follows: In considering the interrelation of body and soul there are three possibilities. First, the body is the decisive factor; sense-impressions are mediated by the body and react upon the soul. The soul therefore is to some extent dependent upon the body. The second possibility is that the body is dependent upon the soul which is the source of the spiritual impulses. The soul fashions the body and makes use of the body during its lifetime. In this case one must speak not of a physical influence, but of a psychic influence. The third possibility is as follows: body and soul are contiguous, but do not interact; a higher power brings about a harmony or agreement between them just as two clocks which are independent of each other agree when they show the time. When therefore an external impression is made upon the senses, a thought process is set up within the soul, but both are unrelated; a corresponding impression is made upon the soul from within by a higher power, just as an impression is made upon the soul through the senses from without. Swedenborg points out that the first and third possibilities are impossible for those who are able to see into the spiritual world, that it is evident to the spiritually enlightened that the soul by virtue of its inner forces is related to a spiritual sun in the same way as the (physical) body is related to the physical sun. And he also shows that everything of a physical nature is dependent upon soul and spirit. He throws fresh light upon what we called the Sun mystery (when speaking of the Mysteries), that mystery of which Julian the Apostate had a dim recollection when he spoke of the sun as a spiritual being. It was this which was the cause of his hostility to Christianity because the Christianity of his day sought to deny Christ's relation to the sun. Through Imaginative cognition Swedenborg restored the Sun mystery as far as was possible for his time.

I have placed these facts before you in order to show what Swedenborg experienced inwardly in the course of developing his spiritual knowledge. His reflections upon the question I have just touched upon were embodied in a kind of philosophical treatise—the kind of treatise written by one who has insight into the spiritual world, not the kind of treatise written by the academic philosopher who is devoid of spiritual vision. At the conclusion of his treatise Swedenborg speaks of what he calls a “vision”. And by this vision he does not imply something he has conjured up, but something he has actually perceived with the eye of the spirit. Swedenborg is not afraid to speak of his spiritual visions. Furthermore he recounts what a particular angel said to him because he is certain of the fact. He no more doubts it than another doubts what a fellow human being has told him. He said: “I was once ‘in the spirit’; three Schoolmen appeared to me, disciples of Aristotle, advocates of his doctrine that attributes a physical influence to all that streams into the soul from without. They appeared on the one side. On the other side appeared three disciples of Descartes who spoke of spiritual influences upon the soul, albeit somewhat inadequately. And behind them appeared three disciples of Leibnitz who spoke of the pre-established harmony, i.e. of the independence of body and soul, of dissimilar monads existing and moving together in a state of absolute harmony pre-established by God. And I perceived nine figures who surrounded me. And the leaders of each group of the three figures were Leibnitz, Descartes and Aristotle, suffused in light”. Swedenborg spoke of this vision as one speaks of an event in everyday life. Then, he said, from out of the abyss there rose up a spirit with a torch in his right hand and as he swung the torch in front of the figures they immediately began to dispute amongst themselves. The Aristotelians defended, from their standpoint, the primacy of physical influences, the Cartesians defended spiritual impulses, and likewise the Leibnitzians defended, with the support of Leibnitz himself, the idea of preestablished harmony. Such visions may describe even the smallest details. Swedenborg tells us that Leibnitz appeared dressed in a kind of toga and the lappets were held by his disciple Wolf. Such details always accompany these visions in which such peculiarities are very characteristic. These figures, then, began to dispute amongst themselves. They all had a good case—and any and every case can be defended. Thereupon, after prolonged conflict, the spirit appeared a second time. He carried the torch in his left hand and lit up their heads from behind. Then the battle of words was really joined. They said: “We cannot distinguish which is our body and which is our soul.” And so they agreed to cast three slips of paper into a box. On the one slip was written “physical influence”, on the second, “spiritual influence” and on the third, “pre-established harmony”. Then they drew lots and drew out “spiritual influence” and said: “Let us agree to recognize spiritual influence.” At that moment an angel descended from the upper world and said: “It is not fortuitous that you drew out the slip of paper labelled ‘spiritual influence’; that choice had already been anticipated by the powers who in their wisdom guide the world because it accords with the truth.”

This is the vision described by Swedenborg. It is open to anyone to regard this vision as of no importance, perhaps even as naive. The salient question however is not whether it is naive or not, but that he experienced it. And that which at first sight seems perhaps extremely naive has profound implications. For that which in the phenomenal world appears to be arbitrary, the vagary of chance, is something totally different when seen symbolically from the spiritual angle. It is difficult to come to an understanding of chance, because chance is only a shadow-image of higher necessities. Swedenborg wishes to indicate something of special importance, namely that it is not he who wills it, but “it” is willed in him. This vision arises because “it” is willed in him. And this is an accurate description of the way in which he arrived at his truths, an accurate description of the spirit in which the treatise was written. How did the Cartesians react? They sought to demonstrate the idea of spiritual influence on purely human and rational grounds. It is possible to arrive at the spirit in this way but that seldom happens. The Aristotelians were no better than the Cartesians; they defended the idea of the spiritual influence, again on human grounds. The Leibnitzians were certainly no better than the other two for they defended the idea of “pre-established harmony”. Swedenborg rejected these paths to the spirit; he did everything possible to prepare himself to receive the truth. And this waiting upon truth, not the determination of truth, this passive acceptance of truth was his aim and was symbolized by the drawing of the slips of paper from the box. This is of vital importance.

We do not appreciate these things at their true worth when we approach them intellectually. We only appreciate them in the right way when they are presented symbolically, even though intelligent people may regard the symbol as naive. Our response to symbols is different from our response to abstract ideas. The symbol prepares our soul to receive the truth from the spiritual world. That is the essential. And if we give serious attention to these things we shall gradually understand and develop ideas and concepts which are necessary for mankind today, ideas which they must acquire by effort and which appear to be inaccessible today simply because people are antipathetic towards them—and for no other reason—an antipathy that springs from materialism.

The whole purpose of our investigations was to study the course of human evolution, first of all up to a decisive turning-point—and this turning-point was the Mystery of Golgotha. Then evolution continues and takes on a new course. These two courses are radically different from each other. I have already described in what respects they differed from each other. In order fully to understand this difference let us recall once again the following: in ancient times it was always possible for man without special training of his psychic life (in the Mysteries this was connected with external ceremonies and cult acts) to be convinced of the reality of the spiritual world through the performance of these rites and ceremonies and thereby of his own immortality, because this certainty of immortality was still latent in his corporeal nature. After the Mystery of Golgotha it was no longer possible for the physical body to “distil” out of itself the conviction of immortality; it could no longer “press” out of itself, so to speak, the perception of immortality. This had been prepared in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. It is most interesting to see how Aristotle, this giant among philosophers, made every effort a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha to grasp the idea of the immortality of the soul; but the idea of immortality he arrived at was a most remarkable conception. Man, in Aristotle's opinion, is only a complete man when he possesses a physical body. And Franz Brentano, one of the best Aristotelians of recent time, says in his study of Aristotle that man is no longer a complete man if some member is lacking; how can he be a complete man when he lacks the whole body? Therefore, to Aristotle, when the soul passes through the gates of death it is of less significance than it was when in the body here on Earth. This shows that he had lost the capacity still to perceive the soul, whilst on the other hand the original capacity to accept the immortality of the soul still persisted. Now, strange to relate, Aristotle was the leading philosopher throughout the Middle Ages. All that can be known, said the Schoolmen, is known to Aristotle and as philosophers we have no choice but to rely upon him and follow in his footsteps. They had no intention of developing spiritual powers or capacities beyond the limits set by Aristotelianism. And this is very significant, for it explains clearly why Julian the Apostate rejected the Christianity that was practised by the Church during the age of Constantine. One must really see these things from a higher perspective. Apart from Franz Brentano, one of the leading Aristotelians of our time, I was personally acquainted with Vincenz Knauer, a Benedictine monk, whose relationship to Aristotle as a Roman Catholic was identical with that of the Schoolmen. In speaking of Aristotle he sought to discover at the same time what could be known of the immortality of the soul by purely human knowledge. And Knauer gave the following interesting summary of his opinion:

“The soul, that is, in this connection, the departed spirit—i.e. the soul of man that has passed through the gates of death—finds itself, according to Aristotle, not in a more perfect state, but in a highly imperfect state, inappropriate to its destiny. The image of the soul is by no means that which is often employed, namely, the image of a butterfly which after shedding its chrysalis takes wing. Rather does the soul resemble a butterfly whose wings have been torn off by a cruel hand and now crawls helplessly in the dust in the form of a miserable worm.”

It is very significant that those who are well versed in Aristotle admit that human knowledge could arrive at no other conclusion. And a certain effort therefore is demanded of us to resist the consequences of this attitude of mind. The materialism of the present time is unwittingly influenced by the Conciliar decree of 869 which abolished the spirit and declared that man consisted of body and soul only.

Modern materialism goes even further; it proposes to abolish the soul as well. That of course is the logical sequel. We need therefore both courage and determination in order to find our way back again to the spirit in the right way. Now Julian the Apostate who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries was aware that a specific spiritual training could lead to the realization that the soul is immortal. This Sun mystery was known to him. And he now became aware of something that filled him with alarm. He was unable to grasp the fact that what he feared so much was a necessity. When he looked back to ancient times he realized that directly or indirectly through the Mysteries man was guided by Cosmic Powers, Beings and Forces. He realized that this may happen on the physical plane, that it is ordained from spiritual spheres because men have insight into these spiritual spheres. In Constantinism he saw a form of Christianity emerge which modelled Christian society and the organization of Christianity on the original principles of the Roman empire. He saw that Christianity had infiltrated into that which the Roman empire had intended for the external social order only. And he saw that the divine-spiritual had been harnessed to the Imperium Romanum. And this appalled him; he was unable to bring himself to admit that this was a necessity for a brief period. He realized that there was wide disparity between the mighty impulses of human evolution and what happened historically. I have often called attention to the need to bear in mind the golden age of the rise of Christianity before the era of Constantine. For at that time powerful spiritual impulses were at work which had been obscured solely because man's independent search for knowledge which he owed to the Christ Impulse had been harnessed to the Conciliar decrees.

If we look back to Origen and to Clement of Alexandria we find men who were open-minded, men still imbued with the Greek spirit: yet they were also conscious of the significance of what had been accomplished through the Mystery of Golgotha. Their conception of this Mystery and of the crucified Christ is considered to be pure heresy in the eyes of all denominations today. In reality the great Church Fathers of the pre-Constantine age who are recognized by the Church are the worst heretics of all. Though they were aware of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the Earth, they gave no indication of wishing to suppress the path to the Mystery of Golgotha, the gate to the Mysteries or the path of the old clairvoyance, which had been the aim of the Christianity of Constantine. In Clement of Alexandria especially we see that his works are shot through with great mysteries, mysteries which are so veiled that it is even difficult for contemporary man to make head or tail of them. Clement speaks of the Logos for example, of the wisdom that streams through and permeates the Universe. He pictures the Logos as music of the spheres fraught with meaning, and the visible world as the expression of the music of the spheres, just as the visible vibration of the strings of a musical instrument is the expression of the sound waves. Thus, in the eyes of Clement, the human form is made in the image of the Logos; that is, to Clement the Logos is a reality and he sees the human form as a fusion of tones from the music of the spheres. Man, he says, is made in the image of the Logos. And in many of Clement's utterances we find traces of that supernal wisdom that dwelt in him, a wisdom illuminated by the Christ Impulse. If you compare these utterances of Clement of Alexandria with the prevailing attitude today then the claim to recognize a man such as Clement of Alexandria without understanding him will appear as more than passing strange.

When it is said that the aim of Spiritual Science is to follow in the main stream of Christianity, to be a new flowering of Christianity to meet the needs of our time, then the cry is raised—the ancient Gnosis is being revived! And at the mention of Gnosis many professing Christians today begin to cross themselves as if faced by the devil incarnate. Gnosis for today is Spiritual Science; but the more developed gnosis of the present time is different from the gnosis known to Clement of Alexandria. What were the views of Clement of Alexandria who lived in the latter half of the second century? Faith, he says, is our starting-point—the orthodox Christian of today is satisfied with faith alone and asks no more. Faith, according to Clement, is already knowledge, but concise knowledge of what is needed; gnosis however confirms and reinforces what we believe, is founded on faith through the teaching of Our Lord and so leads to a faith that is scientifically acceptable and irrefutable. In these words Clement of Alexandria expresses for his time what we must realize today. Christianity therefore demands that gnosis, the Spiritual Science of today, must actively participate in the development of Christianity. But the modern philistine protests: “We must distinguish between science (which he would limit to sense experience) and faith. Faith must have no part in science.” Clement of Alexandria however says: To faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love, and to love the “Kingdom”. This is one of the most profound utterances of the human spirit because it bears witness to an intimate union with the life of the spirit. First we are nourished in faith; but to faith is added gnosis, that is, knowledge or understanding. Out of this living knowledge, i.e. when we penetrate deeply into things, there is first born genuine love through which our Divine inheritance operates. Mankind can only be the vehicle of the influx of the Divine as it was in the “beginning” if to faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love and to love the “Kingdom”. We must look upon these utterances as bearing witness to the deep spirituality of Clement.

Difficult as it may seem we must make the true form of Christian life once again accessible to mankind today. It is important to see certain things for what they are today and we shall then know where to look for the real cause of our present tribulations (i.e. the War of 1914). The effect of these calamities is such that, as a rule, no attempt is made to discover what really lies behind them. When, for example, an Alpine village is buried beneath an avalanche, everyone sees the avalanche crash down; but if we want to discover the cause of the avalanche we must look for it perhaps in an ice-crystal where the snow-slip began. It is easy enough to observe the destruction of the village by the avalanche, but it is not so easy to provide tangible evidence that the disaster was caused by an ice-crystal. And so it is with the great events of history! It is evident that mankind is now caught up in a terrible catastrophe; this is the conflagration that has overwhelmed us. We have to look for the sparks—and they are many—which first set the conflagration alight. But we do not pursue our enquiries far enough in order to ascertain where the conflagration first began. Today we are afraid to see things for what they are.

Let us assume that we wish to form an opinion about a certain field of science. Usually we rely upon the opinion of the specialist in that particular field. Why is his opinion accepted as authoritative? Simply because he is an expert in this field. Generally speaking it is the specialist or university professor who determines what is accepted as scientific today. Let us take a concrete case. I am well aware that it does not make for popularity to call a spade a spade, but that is no matter. But unless an increasing number of people is prepared to get to the root of things today we shall not overcome our present tribulations. Let us assume that a leading authority says the following: people are always talking about man in terms of body and soul. This idea of the dualism of body and soul is fundamentally unsatisfactory. That we still speak of body and soul today is due to the fact that we are dependent on a language that is already outmoded, which we have inherited from an earlier epoch when people were far more stupid than today. These people were so foolish as to believe that the body and soul were separate entities. When we speak of these matters today we are compelled to make use of these terms; we are victims of a language which belongs to the past. And our authority continues: we have to accept body and soul as separate entities, but this is quite unjustified. Anyone speaking from the present standpoint and wholly uninfluenced by the views of ancient times would perhaps say: let us assume here is a flower and here is a man. I see his form and complexion, his external aspect, just as I see that of the flower. The rest must be inferred.—Now someone might come along and object: that is true, but the man in question also sees the flower in his soul. But that is pure illusion. What I really receive from the perception of a flower or a stone is a sense-impression and the same is true of the man in question. The idea that an inner image persists in the soul is pure illusion. The only things we know are external relationships.

You will say that you can make nothing of this argument! And a good thing too, because it is a farrago of nonsense, it is the acme of stupidity. This crass stupidity is supported by all kinds of careful laboratory investigations into the human brain and sundry clinical findings and so on. In short the man is a fool. He is in a position to provide good clinical results because laboratories are at his disposal; but the conclusions which he draws from these findings are pure nonsense. Men of this type are a commonplace today. To say these things does not make for popularity. The cycle of lectures which has appeared in book form by the man I am referring to—strangely enough his name is Verworn, [original note 1] I take this to be pure coincidence—is called “The Mechanism of the Spiritual Life”. It would be about as sensible to write about the “ligneousness of iron” as about “the mechanism of spiritual life”.

Now if this is typical of the intellectual acumen of our most enlightened minds it is not in the least surprising that if those disciplines which are far from being accurate at least in relation to external facts—and in this respect Verworn is capable of accurate observation because he describes what he sees, but unfortunately muddies everything with his own foolish ideas—that if those disciplines which are unsupported by external evidence such as political science, for example, are exposed to the scientific mode of thinking, then the greatest nonsense results. Political science should be supported by thoughts that are rooted in reality, but lacks these thoughts for reasons I have indicated in my last lecture. And people are forcibly reminded of this fact.

I referred earlier in this lecture to Kjellén, one of the leading Swedish thinkers. His book The State as Organism is ingenious; towards the end of the book he puts forward a remarkable idea, but neither he, nor others today, can make anything of it. He quotes a certain Fustel de Coulanges (note 5), author of La Cité antique, who showed that when we analyse pre-Christian political and social institutions we find that they are entirely founded on religious rites and observances; the entire State has a social and spiritual foundation. Thus people are willy-nilly brought face to face with the facts, for I pointed out in my last lecture that the social order stemmed from the Mysteries and had a spiritual origin. In studying the body politic or political science people are faced with these questions but are at a loss to understand them. They can make nothing of what even history reports when they can no longer rely upon documents.

And still less can they make anything of the other idea which I indicated as a new path to the Christ. This idea which we find especially in the Mysteries and in Plato's writings, that remarkable echo of the Mystery teachings must arise once again. The central figure of Plato's dialogues is Socrates surrounded by his disciples. In the debate between Socrates and his disciples Plato unfolds his teachings. In his writings Plato was in communion with Socrates after the latter's death. Now this is something more than a literary device. It is the continuation, the echo of what was practised in the Mysteries where the neophytes were gradually prepared for communion with the souls of the dead who continue to direct the sensible world from the spiritual world. Plato's philosophy is developed out of his communion with Socrates, after the death of Socrates. This idea must be revived again and I have already indicated what form it must take. We must get beyond the dry bones of history, beyond the mere recording of external events. We must be able to commune with the dead, to let the thoughts of the dead arise in us once again. It is in this sense that we must be able to take seriously the idea of resurrection. It is through personal inner experience that Christ reveals Himself to mankind. It is by following this path that the truth of the Christ can be demonstrated. But this path demands of us that we develop the will in our thinking. If we can develop only such thoughts as are suited to the observation of the external world we cannot arrive at those thoughts which are really in touch with the dead. We must acquire the capacity to draw thoughts from the well of our inmost being. Our will must be prepared to unite with reality, and then the will which is thus spiritualised by its incorporation in our thinking will encounter spiritual beings, just as the hand encounters a physical object in the external world. And the first spiritual beings we encounter will, as a rule, be the dead with whom we are in some way karmically connected. You must not expect to find guidance in these abstruse matters from a set of written instructions which can be carried about in one's waistcoat pocket. Things are not as simple as that. One encounters well-intentioned people who ask: How do I distinguish between dream and reality, between phantasy and reality? In the individual case one should not attempt to distinguish between them in accordance with a fixed rule. The whole soul must be gradually attuned so that it can pass judgement in the individual case, just as in the external world we seek to pass judgement irrespective of the individual case. We must develop a wider perspective in order to form a judgement about the particular case. The dream may be a close approximation to reality, but it is not possible in the individual case to state categorically: this is the right and proper way to distinguish a mere dream from reality. Indeed what I am saying at the moment may not apply in specific cases, because other points of view must be taken into consideration. It is important to develop in ourselves the power to discriminate in spiritual matters.

Let us take the familiar case of a person who is dreaming or who imagines he is dreaming. Now it is not easy to distinguish between dream and reality. People who study dreams today follow in the footsteps of Herr Verworn. He says that one can undertake an interesting experiment. He quotes the following example. Someone taps with a pin on the window of a house where the occupant is asleep. He is dreaming at the time, wakes up and says he had heard rifle-fire. The dream, according to Verworn, exaggerates. The tappings of the pin on the window-pane have become rifle-shots. Verworn explains this in the following way: we assume that in waking consciousness the brain is fully active. In dream consciousness the brain activity is diminished; only the peripheral consciousness is active. Normally the brain plays no part; its activity is diminished. That is why the dream is so bizarre and why, therefore, the tappings of the pin turn into rifle-fire. Now the public is highly credulous. They are first told in the relevant passage in Verworn's book that the dream exaggerates and then, later on, they are told (not precisely in the words I have used) that the brain is less active and therefore the dream appears bizarre. The reader has meanwhile already forgotten what was told in the first place. He is unable to relate the two statements and simply says: the State has appointed an expert in these matters and so we must accept his word. Now, as you know, belief in authority is taboo today. He who does not hold these views about the dream may none the less feel that the following way of thinking might well be the right approach. Let us assume you are dreaming of a friend who is dead. You dream, or believe you are dreaming that you are sharing some situation in common with him—and then you wake up. Your first thought on awakening is of course: but he died some time ago! But in the dream it never occurred to you that he was dead. Now you can find many ingenious explanations of this dream if you refer to Verworn's book, The Mechanism of the Spirit. But if this is a dream, and a dream is only a memory of everyday life, you will have difficulty in understanding why the foremost thought in your mind, namely the death of your friend, plays no part in the dream when you have just experienced a situation which you know for certain you could not have shared with him when alive. You are then justified in saying: I have now experienced with X something I could not have experienced in life, something that I have not only not experienced, but which would have been impossible in our normal relationship. Assuming that the soul of X, the real soul, which has passed through the gates of death is behind this dream-picture, is it not self-evident that you do not share his death experience? There is no reason why X's soul should appear to be dead since it still lives on. If you take these two factors into consideration—perhaps in conjunction with other factors—you will conclude: my dream-picture veils a real meeting with the soul of X. The thought of death never occurs to me because the dream is not a memory of everyday life: in the dream I receive an authentic visitation from the deceased (i.e. X). I now experience the visitation in the form of a dream-picture, a situation which could not have arisen under the normal circumstances of everyday life. Furthermore the thought of death never occurs to me because the soul of the deceased persists. And then you have every reason for saying: when I experience this apparent dream I inhabit a realm where physical memory does not operate—and what I am about to say is most important—for it is characteristic of our physical life that our physical memory remains unimpaired. This memory does not exist to the same extent, nor is it of the same nature in the world of spirit which we enter at death. The memory which we need for the world of the spirit we must first develop in ourselves. The physical memory is tied to the physical body. Therefore anyone who is familiar with the super-sensible realm knows that the physical memory cannot enter there. It is not surprising that we have no memory of the deceased; but we are aware that we are in communion with the living soul of X.

Those who are acquainted with this fact maintain that what we call memory in the physical life is something totally different in the spiritual life. Anyone who has succumbed to the impact of Dante's great work, the “Divine Comedy” will never doubt, if he has spiritual discernment, that Dante experienced spiritual visions, that he had insight into the world of the spirit. He who comprehends the language of those who were familiar with the world of the spirit will find convincing proof of this in Dante's introduction to the “Divine Comedy”. Dante was well versed in spiritual knowledge; he was no dilettante in matters of the spirit; he was, so to speak, an expert in this field. He was aware that normal memory does not operate in the realm where we are in communion with the dead. He often speaks of the dead, of how the dead dwell in the “Light”. In the “Divine Comedy” you will find these beautiful lines on the theme of memory:

“O Light supreme, by mortal thought unscanned,
Grant that Thy former aspect may return,
Once more a little of Thyself relend.

Make strong my tongue that in its words may burn
One single spark of all Thy glory's light
For future generations to discern.

For if my memory but glimpse the sight
Whereof these lines would now a little say,
Men may the better estimate Thy might.”

(Paradiso. Canto XXXIII) [original note 2]

Thus Dante was aware that it is impossible with normal memory to grasp that which could originate in the spiritual world. There are many today who ask: why should we aspire to the spiritual world when we have enough to contend with in the physical world; the ordinary man seeks a practical answer to the problems of this life!—But have these people any reason to believe that those who were initiated into the Mysteries in ancient times were any less concerned with the physical world? The initiates knew that the spiritual world permeates the physical world, that the dead are unquestionably active amongst us even though people deny it. And they knew that this denial merely creates confusion. He who denies that those who have passed through the gates of death exercise an influence on this world resembles the man who says: “Nonsense! I don't believe a word you say”—and then proceeds to behave as if he did believe it. It is not so easy, of course, to give direct proof of the havoc that is wrought when the influx of the spiritual world into the physical world is not taken into account, when people act on the assumption that this interaction can be ignored. Our epoch shows little inclination to bridge the gap that separates us from the kingdom where the dead and the higher Beings dwell. In many respects our present epoch harbours a veritable antipathy towards the world of the spirit. And it is the duty of the spiritual scientist who is really honest and sincere to be aware of the forces that are hostile to the development of Anthroposophy. For there are deep underlying reasons for this hostility and they stem from the same sources which are responsible for all the forces which are today in active opposition to the true progress of mankind.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. In the German text there is a play upon the word. If pronounced with an open “0” and a rolled “R” it gives the word verworren, i.e. muddle-headed or confused.

Note 2. Translation by Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Penguin Classics, 1962.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Otto Ludwig (1813–65). Best known for his realist novels Der Erbförster and Zwischen Himmel and Erde, genre painting with careful observation of detail. He coined the term “poetischer Realismus”. His “Shakespeare Studien” showed preoccupation with dramatic theory. During his process of poetic creation he experienced a spectrum of colours and forms, known as “synaesthesia”.

Note 2. “Synaesthesia” had first been foreshadowed by E. P. A. Hoffman in Kreisleriana. The hearing of a word or sound evokes a sensation of colour varying in accordance with the quality of the sound (cf. Baudelaire's sonnet “Correspondances”—“les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent” and Rimbaud's sonnet “Voyelles” in which a definite colour-value is ascribed to each of the five vowels). F. W. H. Myers described synaesthesia as follows: “When the hearing of an external sound carries with it, by some arbitrary association of ideas, the seeing of some form or colour.”

Note 3. Freytag (1816–95). Author of realistic novels which extolled the virtues of the German middle class—Soll and Haben, Die Ahnen.

Note 4. Swedenborg (1688–1772), engineer, scientist, philosopher and theologian. In his Arcana Caelestia he wrote: “... it has been granted me now for some years to be constantly and continuously in the company of spirits and angels, hearing them speak and speaking with them in turn. It has been given to me to hear and see the wonderful things which are in the other life ... I have been instructed there in regard to different kinds of spirits; the state of souls after death ... and especially concerning the doctrine of faith which is acknowledged in the universal Heaven.”

Note 5. Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89). Originator of the scientific approach to history. His Cité antique showed that ancient institutions derived from religious beliefs common to primitive peoples. It was a study of the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards.—Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self-chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

Our time can be understood in its spiritual aspect only if it is recognized that external events must be seen as symbols, and that far deeper impulses are at work in the world. These deeper impulses can be difficult to discern and spiritual knowledge alone can enlighten us about them.

I would like to begin by speaking about an interesting personality of the 19th Century, someone who as a thinker is extraordinarily fascinating because he is one of those who, in a characteristic way, reflects what is alive in our time and also what has in a certain sense died out. This interesting thinker known only to a few: African Spir,¹ died in 1890. In the mid 1860s in Leipzig he began to consider how he could best convey his philosophy of life to his fellow men.

African Spir was an original thinker and he gained nothing of significance from his contact with Masonic circles. When we study him, which to begin with can be done through his writings, we find that he was very little influenced by the 19th Century cultural life around him On the contrary there comes to expression in his view of life an inner quality peculiar to himself. The most significant of his writings: “Thinking and Reality” was published in 1873. African Spir came to recognize, intuitively as it were, what thinking actually is. Not an all-embracing recognition perhaps but significant all the same. What interested him was the true nature of thinking. He wanted to discover what actually happens in man while he is thinking. He also wanted to find out how man is related, while he is engaged in thinking, on the one hand to external reality and on the other to his own inner experience.

Thinking can be understood only when it is seen as a power in man which, in its own essential nature, does not belong to the external physical world at all. On the contrary in its own being and nature it belongs to the spiritual world. We already experience the spiritual world, though not consciously, when we really think; i.e., when our thinking is not merely acting as a mirror reflecting external phenomena. When we are engaged in real thinking then we have the possibility to experience ourselves as thinkers. If man becomes conscious of himself within thinking he knows himself to be in a world that exists beyond birth and death. Few people are aware of it, but nothing is more certain than when man thinks, he is then active as a spiritual being.

African Spir was one of the few and he expressed it when he said: “When I form thoughts, particularly the loftiest thoughts of which I am capable, then I feel myself to be in a world of permanence, subject to neither space nor time; a world of eternity.” He enlarged on this observation saying: “When one turns away from the world of thinking as such and contemplates what we experience when the external world acts upon us, then we are dealing with something which is qualitatively utterly different from the thoughts we apply to it. This is the case whether we contemplate external phenomena, man's evolution, his history or his life in society. Thoughts themselves lead me to the recognition that they, as thoughts, are eternal. In the external world everything is transitory; what is earthly comes into being and passes away. That is not true of any thought. Thinking itself tells me that it is absolute reality for it is rooted in eternity.”

For African Spir this was something he simply experienced as a fact. He argued that what we experience as external reality does not agree, does not accord with the reality we experience as thinking. Consequently it cannot be real in the true sense; it is semblance, illusion. Thus, along a path, different to that followed by the ancient Oriental, different also from that followed by certain mystics, African Spir comes to the realization that everything we experience in space and time is fundamentally semblance. In order to confirm this from another aspect he said something like the following: “Man, in fact all living creatures, is subject to pain. However, pain does not reveal its true nature for it contains within itself a power for its overcoming; it wills to be overcome. Pain does not want to exist, therefore it is not true reality. Pain as such must be an aspect of the transitory world of illusion and the reality is the force within it which strives for painlessness. This again shows us that the external world is an illusion, nowhere is it completely free of pain so it cannot be true reality. The real world, the soul-world, is plunged into semblance and pain.”

African Spir felt that man can only reach a view of life that is inwardly satisfying if he becomes conscious, through his own resolve and effort, that he bears within himself an eternal world. He maintains that this eternal world proclaims itself in man's thinking and in the constant striving to overcome pain and reach salvation. Spir insists that the external world is semblance, not because it appears as such to him, but because he is convinced that in thinking he lays hold of true reality. It is because the external world does not conform, is not of like nature, to thinking that he says it is semblance.

If we survey the various world views held by those 19th-century thinkers who lived in the same milieu as Spir, we do not find any of such subtlety as his. So how does Spir come to experience the world the way he did? If we look for an explanation in the light of spiritual knowledge, we must make the following comments: Insofar as we are surrounded by the external material world, by events of history and also by our life in society we live on the physical plane. Whereas in thinking, that is to say, when we really live in thinking, we are no longer on the physical plane. It is only when we think about external material existence that we turn to the physical plane and in so doing we actually deny our own nature. When we become conscious of what really lives in thinking we cannot but feel that within thinking we are in a spiritual world.

Thus when Spir became aware of the real nature of what in man is the most abstract: pure thinking, he felt that there is a definite boundary between the physical and the spiritual world. Basically he asserts that man belongs to two worlds, the physical and the spiritual and that the two are not in agreement. Spir comes to the realization, out of an elemental natural impulse as it were, of the existence of a spiritual world. He does not express it in so many words, but declares that everything around us, be it our natural, historical or social life, is mere semblance. And he finds that this semblance does not agree with the reality given in thinking. So although his experience of the spiritual world is not of direct vision, but an experience within abstract thinking, he nevertheless establishes that these two spheres are divided by a sharp boundary.

Looking closer at the way Spir presented his view of the world one realizes that his 19th-century contemporaries were bound to find it difficult; and it is natural that he was not understood. It could be said that he tried to contract the whole spiritual world into a single point within thinking; draw it together so to speak from a spiritual world otherwise unknown to him. He put the whole emphasis on the fact that, in his experience of thinking, he found proof that the spiritual world exists and that the physical world is semblance. This led him to stress that truth, i.e., reality, could never be found in the external world, for that world is in every aspect untrue and incomplete. According to his own words he was convinced that his discovery was a most significant event in history for it proved once and for all that reality is not to be found in the external world. He met no understanding. He was even driven to the expediency of offering a prize to anyone who could disprove his claim. No one took up the challenge, no one tried to refute him. He suffered all the distress that a thinker can experience from being entirely ignored; killed by silence as the saying goes. He lived for a long time in Tübingen, then in Stuttgart and finally in Lausanne due to lung trouble. He was buried in Geneva in the year 1890. On his grave lies a Bible carved in stone, showing the opening words of St. John's Gospel: “And the Light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not,” followed by “Fiat Lux” (Let there be light) which were his last words before he died.

One could say that Spir's whole philosophy was a kind of premonition. In concerning oneself with such thinkers one comes to recognize that there were many who, in the course of the 19th Century, had a premonition that something like spiritual science must come. These thinkers were prevented from reaching spiritual knowledge themselves by the circumstances and conditions prevailing in that century. African Spir was such a thinker. If we read his writings, without concerning ourselves with his life, we are faced with a riddle: How does a man come to recognize the reality of the spiritual world so decisively merely by means of thinking? How does he come to recognize the spiritual within himself with such certainty? How does he come to know that his inner being is so firmly rooted in true reality that it convinces him the external world is unreal? The explanation lies in Spir's life, in the simple fact that he was born in Russia (1837). His real name was African Alexandrovitch. He was a Russian transplanted into Central Europe, a Russian who, being influenced by Central and Western European views of life, represented a wonderful blend of the latter with Russian characteristics. He did not learn German till he came to Leipzig in the mid 1860s but then wrote all his works in that language.

Let us now remember that within the peoples of Western Europe there has gradually come to expression during the course of mankind's evolution the sentient soul in the Latin peoples of the South, the intellectual or mind soul in the Latin peoples of the West, the consciousness soul in the Anglo-American peoples, the 'I' in people of Central Europe; while the Russian people of Eastern Europe are waiting to Develop the Spirit Self. One could say that in the Russian people the Spirit-Self is still in an embryonic state. Bearing this in mind we realize that African Spir was born with an inner disposition to await the Spirit-Self. This aspect of his soul life was stirring within him but it came to expression colored by the world conceptions prevailing in Western Europe.

The time will come when the Eastern European will have developed his true nature. It will then be an impossibility for him to look upon the external physical world as a world that is real in the true sense. He will experience his own inner being as rooted in true reality. And this he will experience not just in thinking but in the Spirit-Self within the spiritual world. He will know himself to be a citizen of the spiritual world and it will seem sheer nonsense to him to regard man the way the West does: as a being evolved from the animal kingdom. That aspect of man the people of the East will recognize to be merely man's outer covering. The Eastern European, as he develops the Spirit Self, will ascend to the realm of the Hierarchies just as the Western European descends to the kingdom of nature. African Spir knew instinctively that his being was rooted in the spirit. This instinctive sense of living in spiritual reality is to be found today in Eastern Europe, but is as yet not able to come to expression in an appropriate view of life. This will become possible only when spiritual science, developed in Central Europe, becomes absorbed into Eastern European culture. What is as yet experienced only instinctively, in Eastern Europe, as life in spiritual reality, will then find expression.

African Spir was unable to express this instinctive experience in spiritual-scientific terms; instead he clothed it in concepts he took over from Spencer, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Taine. This means that instead of clothing it in images obtained through living thinking he used the kind of abstract concepts which are in reality no more than mental images reflecting the physical world. What in African Spir was leading an embryonic existence had as it were withdrawn from Western culture, but it had left its imprint in which could be recognized what had been there before as a living reality. African Spir is such an interesting figure because he incorporates both past and future. He is also a clear demonstration of the deep truth, continually stressed by spiritual science, i.e. that the European peoples are in reality like a human soul with its members placed side by side. The peoples towards the West constitute the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul placed next to one another. In the Central Europeans the ‘I’ comes to expression and the Eastern Europeans prepare for the Spirit Self.

At present history is dealt with in a most unsatisfactory fashion. However, it can be foreseen how it will be dealt with in the future. At present external facts are always emphasized but they are not the essential. To hold on merely to external facts is comparable to undertaking a study of “Faust” by describing the letters page by page. An understanding of “Faust” is not dependent on the letters but on what is learnt through them. Similarly a time will come when consideration of history will depend as little on external facts as reading a book depends on a description of the letters. Behind the external facts the real history will be discerned, just as the meaning in “Faust” is discerned behind the printed letters. This is radically expressed but it does illustrate the situation. Ordinary history will be seen as a history that describes the symptoms; a man like African Spir will be seen as a symptom of the soul element of Eastern Europe merging with that of Central Europe.

The present age is as yet a long way from studying either history or life in this way. Yet only by bringing things of this nature together, and relating them with a deeper understanding to current events, can one become conscious of what is really happening in the world. The present age has to an unprecedented degree robbed the first half of the 19th Century of its spiritual achievements; this also applies to the second half but to a lesser degree. It is indeed justified to speak about forgotten aspects of spiritual life in relation to the 19th Century; even more than I have done in my book Vom Menschenrätsel. Some day the history of the 19th Century will have to be rewritten. This was felt by Hermann Grimm² when he said: “A time will come when the history of the last decades will be completely rewritten. When this happens those who are now looked upon as great figures will appear rather puny and others, quite different figures, which are now forgotten will emerge as the great ones.” One comes to realize what a “fable convenue” the official history of the 19th Century is when one attempts to study its history as it truly is and can recognize the forces that were at work. The reason I said that our time has robbed the 19th Century of its spiritual achievements is because that century produced many thinkers who, for lack of recognition, were condemned to isolation. African Spir is a characteristic example. In saying this I am not referring to the public in general but to those who, through their vocation, had a duty to be interested in him and his work. When such human beings die and their souls pass into the spiritual world they do not just vanish. They continue to be influential from the spiritual world in ways of which there is usually little inkling.

Can anyone really believe that when a thinker such as African Spir dies he simply disappears as far as the world here is concerned? The spiritual world is no cloud-cuckoo-land; just as our individual bodies are permeated by soul and spirit, so does soul and spirit permeate the whole cosmos. Soul and spirit live all around us like the air. What a man has produced, in a life of strenuous thinking while in a physical body, does not just disappear when he dies and passes into the spiritual world. In such cases something very remarkable happens. A thinker who here on earth has met with much acclaim is in a different position to a solitary neglected thinker like Spir. A thinker, who receives much popular recognition, has as it were finished with his thoughts when he dies. Not so a thinker like Spir, he strives to protect his thoughts—what I am now saying is of the greatest importance—which are present spiritually in the physical world. Such a thinker remains with his thoughts. He protects them for a period lasting decades; during this time they are not accessible to human beings living in physical bodies.

When a thinker like African Spir dies his thoughts stay with him, he as it were protects them so that those who are living have no immediate access to them. This causes an unconscious longing for these thoughts to arise in human beings which they cannot satisfy. In other words there are human beings whose forefathers paid no attention to such a thinker and allowed him to die unrecognized. He had produced thoughts which ought to be developed further, but because he protects them he prevents them being reached by human beings and this causes an undefined longing for these thoughts. Because the longing cannot be satisfied it results in a feeling of deep inner dissatisfaction. In earlier times there were many who experienced such unsatisfied longing. In our time it is present to a particularly high degree because the last third of the 19th Century produced a great number of highly significant thinkers to whom the world paid no attention, thus robbing them of their spiritual achievements.

What should be done? That is a most important question. What one must do is to speak about such forgotten aspects of cultural life. When, in a few strokes, I place before your mind's eye such a thinker as African Spir, it is not for any arbitrary reason or merely to tell you something interesting. It is to draw attention to the fact that we are surrounded by a spiritual world of real thoughts, thoughts which a thinker has preserved and which he now protects. What we must do is to turn with a feeling of reverence to the thinker concerned. He may then give us his thoughts himself, thus enabling our thinking to become creative. That is why in the course of our studies I like to call your attention to such forgotten thinkers. A link of real significance is forged thereby. If I manage to some extent to inscribe in your souls a picture of African Spir, something comes about which acts in a certain sense as a corrective of a wrong, and that is a task of spiritual science.

The spiritual world is not a nebulous pantheistic abstraction. It is as concretely real as the external sense-perceptible phenomena. We come in contact with the spiritual world not by constantly talking about spirit, spirit, spirit, but by pointing to concrete spiritual facts. And one such fact is that especially at the present time we can bring to life in ourselves a connection with forgotten thinkers so that fruits of their thoughts can enter our souls. On their side these souls become released from protecting their thoughts.

We therefore perform a real deed when, with the right feeling and attitude, we speak of these thinkers who in recent times have been victims of spiritual isolation and robbed of the fruits of their work. Our age will thereby receive, at least it may receive, spiritual thoughts which it so sorely needs. A thinking which merely mirrors the external world in the usual pedestrian manner is unfruitful. Thinking which in the customary way is applied to nature, history or social life has finished its task as soon as the external phenomena have been understood. Nowadays so many thinkers are unproductive because all that occupy their thoughts are external or historical events. Thinking is fruitful only when it takes its content from the spiritual world. A thought is like a corpse as long as it only mirrors nature or history. It becomes alive and creative when it is receptive to what the Hierarchies pour down from the spiritual world.

At present there is no inclination to seek union through thinking with the spiritual world. That is something which is positively avoided whereas pride is taken in pursuing “genuine” science. The view is that now at last science has arrived after mankind has remained for so long in a stage of infancy. It must be said though that this science, particularly when it forms the basis for a view of life, has produced some strange results. For one thing it cannot come to grips with what thinking actually is. Natural science dissects man's body and comes to amazing conclusions about the structure of the brain and its function. Thinking itself is disregarded. As a result thinking as such has gradually become a ghostly something of which science is afraid. As a consequence modern science is particularly against thinkers whose lives were steeped in thinking, thinkers like Hegel, Schelling, Jacob Boehme and other mystics whose view of life was built on thoughts. The modern researcher takes the attitude that these people no doubt did think, but thoughts do not lead to certainty. A scientist feels eerie when he must leave the sense world, i.e., the realm which African Spir called a world of semblance and illusion. Yet the scientist cannot establish science if he refuses to think, so he is caught in a dilemma. This dilemma caused one of science's elite, who felt himself especially suited to represent scientific opinion, to utter an aphorism which, when the history of the second half of the 19th century comes to be rewritten, could well be inserted as characteristic of many aspects of this period. At a scientific congress this scientist declared: “We men of medicine have to admit that, like educated folk in general, exact science cannot do completely without thinking.”

Thus in the 19th century, at a serious gathering of scientists it is admitted with regrets that thinking cannot be dispensed with altogether, at least not if one is a medical man or a well educated person. In other words thinking is something very awkward that causes uncertainty the moment one looks at it.

This attitude to thinking causes in people strange feelings when they hear that a spiritual world penetrates the physical world. They are afraid of thinking because they sense that this is where the spiritual world enters, and, as they insist that there is no spiritual world, they will have nothing to do with thinking. You may remember my explaining that what is understood by the word genius will change in the course of evolution. I pointed out that what makes someone a genius can only be understood by assuming that more spirit is active in him than in a non-genius. When the discoveries of a genius happen to be of a mechanical nature he meets great admiration. If his genius takes other forms people are nowadays apt to vent their aversion to such proof of spiritual power on the genius himself. A rather interesting essay has appeared on the subject of genius. After arguing that a genius is someone partly sick, partly mad the essay culminates with this curious sentence: “Let us thank God we are not all geniuses!”

These things must be seen as symptoms of our time, for they are characteristic of a general trend. Yet such things are usually ignored or not taken seriously because their true significance is not recognized. They may even be laughed at and the present miseries are not seen to be related to them. Far from attempting to bring order into the chaos through spiritual insight, man is allowing his contact with the spiritual world to deteriorate. As a consequence he also loses contact with the reality of the external world because without spiritual insight he can reach only its outer shell. In saying this I am pointing to a significant phenomenon of our time: catastrophes occur because thoughts, which ought to relate to external events, do not. As a result the external events take over and go their own way independent of man. They do this even when man has created the events himself. Then the thoughts of man, which may be excellent, often have no effect, they can find no foothold in the external events. It has gradually come about that the individual may have fine ideas but they have a life of their own while external reality also has a life of its own. A dreadful discrepancy exists between what takes place in many heads and what goes on all around them, a disharmony of such proportions as has never before occurred.

When such things are discussed one is invariably accused of exaggeration. But they are not exaggerated and one must speak about them, for they are the truth and must be recognized. There is evidence of these things everywhere but the awareness of them is not great enough to realize their implications. Take the following example which could be multiplied a thousandfold: In the year 1909 in Russia a conversation took place between two men concerning the relation of Russia to Central Europe. This was soon after Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.³ The conversation took place as feelings in Russia were running high, threatening already then to bring about the terrible situation which finally erupted in 1914. That the 1914 war did not break out already in 1909 hung on a thread. It was prevented, but this was not thanks to certain quarters in Russia. These things must be seen as they truly are. The two men, one a Croatian, the other Russian, discussed in particular the relation between Russia and Austria. After they had looked at all existing possibilities for stabilizing relations between Central and Eastern Europe the Russians summed up his own view by saying: “A war between Russia and Austria-Germany would be, not only utterly inhuman, but also completely senseless.” These sensible words, which were by no means based on emotions, summed up well-thought-out, well-considered judgements about the structure of Central and Eastern Europe. When I now mention the name of the Russian who spoke them you will have confirmation of what has just been discussed. The Russian who so vehemently rejected war in 1909 was Lvov.⁴ Five years later in 1914—when he could not after all have changed into someone completely different—we find him as the president of the first revolutionary Russian Government. In other words he was by then the person at the very center of all the events that have led to the present miseries in Europe.

Just imagine the situation: we see external events run their course and we see human beings, active in the midst of these events, who think quite differently. Human beings with sensible ideas are active in these events but are overwhelmed by them. Why are they overwhelmed? Because of the failure to relate concepts and ideas to spiritual reality. Thoughts are powerless unless they are united with the spiritual element of the world. According to the general opinion held nowadays it is a drawback for someone, active in social or political life, to be a thinker. A thinker is regarded as unpractical, incapable of understanding the realities of life. Yet the truth is that those who are usually regarded as practical have only the kind of abstract thoughts which cannot lay hold of reality. One must ask if it really is sensible to select for high political office someone who is more renowned for fly-fishing than his thinking ability? “Fly-fishing” is the title of a book written by Sir Edward Grey⁵ and fly-fishing is what fills his mind. A ministerial colleague once said about him, not without justification: “The reason Grey has such excellent concentration is because he simply repeats what others put into his mind; no thought of his own ever disturbs his concentration.”—That colleague hit the nail on the head. So you see, according to modern opinion, someone who understands fly-fishing must also understand politics for it would be a drawback if he had any real thoughts. However, as I have said, so often it is just such opinions which at present reveal their futility for they have brought about the disastrous conditions we are in.

It is obvious that the capabilities which today are regarded as adequate for political office and statesmanship are in fact inadequate. This is because modern man has no interest in turning his thoughts to anything other than external phenomena. Many years ago I called this condition “fact-fanaticism”; earlier still I called it “the dogma of practical experience.” You can read about it in my books Goethe's Conception of the World and Goethe the Scientist.

We must be clear about the fact that those whose thinking merely reflects natural processes, historical events or external social life, develop thoughts which are purely ahrimanic. That does not necessarily mean that they are wrong or incorrect, but they are ahrimanic. The ahrimanic element must of necessity exist. The whole content of natural science is ahrimanic and will only lose its ahrimanic nature when it becomes imbued with life. This will happen when man's thinking ceases merely to mirror external phenomena in a mechanical way. Thinking must become creative, it must become saturated through and through with spiritual content. Social laws, laws of rights, etc. will be ahrimanic if, when formulating them, one relies solely on that capacity, on that aspect of thinking which mirrors the external events and reflects upon them. When, as in such instances, ahrimanic forces are active in spheres where they do not belong they become destructive. Healing will come to our age when the thoughts and ideas that are applied to social conditions and political life are in living contact with spiritual reality.

Because of the demands it would make upon them there are few people today who are able to accept these facts. When one speaks about the spirit it is noticeable that people are on their guard. What goes on in their consciousness on such occasions is not so important; what goes on in their sub-consciousness is of great importance. What lives there is bad conscience which they experience only subconsciously. Because they are unable to admit to themselves that their thoughts are lifeless and ahrimanic they avoid becoming conscious of the fact. The moment one's thinking attains a living grasp of spiritual reality one can no longer avoid the recognition that thoughts, which merely mirror external phenomena, are ahrimanic. This recognition causes fear. It is fear that holds man back from attaining creative thinking. Creative thinking is only attained when man is inspired—even unconsciously—from the spiritual world.

Thus we see that, apart from all the many other ills that beset mankind, nothing less than a war against the spirit is waged in our time. It is a war which, under the influence of certain circles, will become more and more widespread; and is being promoted in the strongest possible way by what may be termed the spirit of our time.—I have to admit that it is extremely difficult to speak about things belonging to this domain, at the same time it is not enough merely to hint at them or avoid calling them by their proper names. In this world nothing can be said to be absolute good or absolute evil; it always depends on the aspect from which it is viewed. The important thing is to recognize that in their right place at the right time things are good; shifted out of the right place and time they are no longer good. Nowadays people all too readily take things in a dogmatic or absolute sense, which so easily leads to misunderstanding about such matters. There is no question of levelling criticism at the age as such, only of drawing attention to facts.

There is an inclination in our time to turn away from the spirit and towards the ahrimanic—the ahrimanic is also spirit but it is spirit which is dead and reveals only what is material. Life has become immensely differentiated and there is more and more need for discrimination. Many examples could be given of different aspects of social life through which one can become aware of the kind of impulses that are at work in our time. Impulses of which we all partake. I shall mention just two such impulses.

One impulse is noticeable mainly in people who have strong links with the land, with the soil. If we travel eastwards we shall find more and more people of this type. If we go westwards we find more and more conditions of emancipation from the soil. In recent decades the Central European has made rapid strides from attachment to the soil to emancipation from it. Country folk have a close connection with the soil; town folk have emancipated themselves from it. One could say the country type of person is agrarian, the city type industrial. These two terms, agrarian and industrial, have taken on a different meaning in the last decade to what they once meant. It is difficult to explain these things because they tend to be taken in a dogmatic, absolute sense, but that is not what is meant. What is meant is a characterization of general tendencies. They are streams within human evolution and we are all involved in them.

Whatever we do in life we have an inclination towards one or the other of these two tendencies in man. Both are naturally good in themselves but under the influences that exist in our time they deteriorate. In the agrarian the deterioration takes the form of a disinclination to rise to anything spiritual; there is a tendency to let the spirit in man lie fallow, wanting to remain as one is and unite with what is not yet spirit. The industrial type develops an opposite tendency; he loses connection with the spirit active in nature and lives more and more in abstractions. His concepts become ever more rarefied and insubstantial. In our time the agrarian is in danger of suffocation for lack of spirituality. For the industrial the danger is of an opposite kind, he lives in spirit which is too rarefied, his concepts have lost all connection with true reality; he could be compared with someone living in air which is too thin.

These are the shadow-sides, especially in our age, of the two tendencies in man. We see that the agrarian type all too easily develops aversion for the spirit, i.e. for cultural development. One cannot however just stand still and avoid participating in evolution. If one remains at the level of nature by turning away from the spirit one sinks below nature and comes into relationship with demonic beings who make one into a real hater of the spirit. As a consequence a view of life develops based on ahrimanic demonology.

The extreme industrial type on the other hand, living in concepts that are completely abstract, develops an attitude of superiority; he sees himself as a kind of superman—though not in the Nietzschean sense—he comes into the realm of Lucifer. Ahriman hands him over to luciferic powers and he becomes steeped in luciferic concepts and emotions. The tendency in the agrarian is towards brutishness; in the industrial it is towards an abstract recklessness of concepts. These phenomena are very conspicuous in our time. They are also serious matters that bring home the fact that our age cannot be understood without spiritual knowledge. Human beings must live together; to do so they must find common ground of understanding by rubbing off their one-sidedness on each other, and certainly both agrarians and industrials have their place.

Already at the time when the Gospels were written it was foreseen that human beings would become more and more differentiated. St. Luke's Gospel is written more with regard for agrarians, St. Matthew's Gospel more for industrials. However, not only the Gospel of St. Luke or that of St. Matthew should speak to us, but all the Gospels. There are “clever” people who find contradictions between the Gospels; they fail to take into account that the Gospels were written by human beings of different inner dispositions. The soul experiences of the writer of St. Luke's Gospel were akin to those of the agrarian type; whereas those of the writer of St. Matthew's Gospel were akin to the inner disposition of the industrial type. The essential thing is not to remain one-sided but to recognize that things which contradict each other are also complementary.

Unless man seeks to unite with the Universal Spirit, which today can be found only through spiritual knowledge—the Spirit which, though it pervades everything, does not live in any individual entity—the time will come when he will resemble the environment he lives in and identifies with. Eduard von Hartmann⁶ once made the apt remark that, when one goes into a rural district and catches sight of an ox with the peasant beside it, there is no great difference in their physiognomy. That is to express it radically, the remark is also derogatory, but one sees what is meant. In our time, because man turns away from the spirit, an intimate relationship develops between his soul and the environment. When one is able to observe life's more subtle aspect it is obvious that the mental life of the agrarian is influenced by his association with the soil, just as the industrial is influenced by his kind of environment. When either of these two types of people thinks about politics or religion, their thoughts are invariably colored by their particular kind of environment. Man's concepts and ideas are dependent today to an awful extent on his external physical environment; they must be set free by the knowledge and insight spiritual science can provide.

A thinker like African Spir would feel things of this kind very strongly. When he said that everything in the external world is semblance, illusion, it was because he became aware, by observing his own inner life, that man comes to experience his inner being as semblance. Through participating in external semblance he comes to feel his inner self as unreal.—How can one expect healing or solutions to come from the semblance in which man is immersed? His inner life is so entangled in conflicting impulses that it is no wonder external conflicts are rife.

To be a spiritual scientist, not just in name or because of some indefinite feeling, but in the deepest and truest sense, life must be observed with the insight of spiritual knowledge. Life today is not seen as it truly is; people shun the spirit and attempt to shape their life purely on the basis of what is unspiritual. It is useless to harbor spiritual knowledge as an abstract general truth, paying no need to it when trying to understand life. To know that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and 'I' or that Lucifer and Ahriman exist, is not enough. One should be able to apply concepts such as ahrimanic or luciferic scientifically, like a physicist applies the concepts of positive and negative electricity when testing these phenomena.

Agrarian and industrial are concepts which cease to be abstract when we, in looking at life, recognize them as luciferic and ahrimanic tendencies, as we have just done. One takes risks when describing things in this way, for people do not want to hear the truth. Yet the truth has to be faced if mankind is ever to find a cure for all the confusion in the world. Salvation from and the healing of the evils of our time are closely related to understanding human life.

• 1 . African Spir 1837–1890 Philosopher.
• 2 . Herman Grimm 1828–1901 Cultural Historian.
• 3 . Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austria 1878. They remained Turkish territory until annexed in 1908.
• 4 . Georgi Evegenievich Lvov 1861–1925 Russian politician. Became leader of the first provisional government on March 15, 1917.
• 5 . Sir Edward Grey 1862–1933 English politician 1905–1916 British Foreign Minister.
• 6 . Eduard von Hartmann 1842–1906 Philosopher

I should like to add supplementary material to our recent considerations. The primary aim has been to show what, in view of the fundamental character and direction of present-day cultural life, is so urgently needed. Our studies also set out to show that from spiritual knowledge there must flow into man's thinking, feeling and willing the impulses needed at the present time. That spiritual impulses are needed must be obvious to many from even a superficial observation of present events.

Let me begin by illustrating the fact that at every turn we encounter proof of the need for spiritual insight. Many examples related to our recent studies could be chosen, but I will take an article that appeared a few days ago in a Berlin newspaper under the title: “Physiology of Politics.” We must pay attention to symptoms of this kind for they indicate the nature of contemporary man's thinking, feeling and willing. Provided one refrains from entering into a one-sided controversy over such an article, seeing it rather as characteristic of the present-day outlook, then a publication of this kind can be enlightening.

The author of the article, Max Verworn,⁷ as I have mentioned before, is deemed one of the greatest authorities in his branch of science. This famous professor of physiology sets out to show that politics ought to be influenced by his way of thinking. This is understandable, indeed it is almost a matter of course, for everyone naturally considers his own thinking the best and therefore recommends its application to important affairs of the time. However, the article leaves one with a peculiar impression. First of all it brings home the fallacy that materialism, even in its crudest form, has been eradicated from natural science. Many who are firmly in the clutches of materialism, nevertheless believe this to be the case. They may have absorbed one or two ideas considered to be philosophical and so imagine materialism to be transcended. This article, by a leading authority on natural science, demonstrates how little materialism is overcome. A sentence like the following brings it home: “The general concept of the animal kingdom includes as a special example the concept of man, just as the animal kingdom is itself a special example within the still more comprehensive concept of the organic world.” This means that if we want to understand man we must turn to the animal kingdom; to understand the animal we must turn to the general concept of organism. Furthermore, this distinguished authority finds it of utmost importance that mutual relationships in political life should be studied the way one studies—that is to say, the way professor Verworn studies—mutual relationships in the animal kingdom. He considers himself to have made a remarkable discovery, for he says: “No one can deny this fact (that man is a special example of the animal kingdom) unless he is completely ignorant of biological evolution. Man differs from the rest of the animal kingdom merely through certain distinguishing features and through his cultural achievements. Nevertheless he is and remains, an animal organism whose total behaviour is subject to the general laws that govern animal species.”

Official science is of the same conviction despite what is said, with more or less emphasis, to the contrary. It is obvious that this way of thinking is prevalent in every aspect of modern science even if theoretically some scientific statements go beyond this view. Consequently it leads Verworn to say: “No doubt our culture has evolved as a special instance of organic evolution.” This means that organic development is supposed to be the source of all man's cultural achievements. So we must study how animals eat and digest, how they gradually develop, how the individual cells in their organism interact. We must then transfer these ideas to family life, to larger and smaller corporations and other bodies within the greater body of the State. We then, according to Verworn, have a proper foundation on which to build up a science of politics. He says: “We shall arrive at sound ideas in this domain only when we try to think of the political State (as he calls it) as a great organism.” According to him the human organism is no different from the animal organism. When investigated one will find that individual cells and systems of cells in the organism are related and interdependent just like the various corporate bodies within the State.

Verworn sees development as a basic feature of the animal organism, but his view of development is peculiar. He says: “Development is a factor common to all living entities.” But what does he understand by development? According to him development takes place when an organic entity adapts itself to the conditions in which it finds itself. Thus development is the result of something organic; i.e., something living adapting to its environment. But at the very first hurdle he stumbles, for he says: “A lower organism such as the amoeba is no doubt adapted from the start for otherwise it would not be capable of life and would be destroyed.” There is the catch! If the lower organism is adapted from the first to its environment, and development is supposed to consist in adaptation, then why does the amoeba evolve further when it is already adapted?

You see from this example that modern science disregards the basic principle of scientific investigation when it comes to the exact application of concepts and ideas. If a sentence such as the one Verworn makes in regard to development was taken seriously the whole current concept of evolution would collapse. But he goes on to make another statement based on the first: “A comparison of the different stages of organization, in various organisms, shows that increasing perfection is due to ever more elaborate and improved physiological means for maintaining life within the most varied changes of environment.” In other words, because the amoeba, the lowest organism, is already adapted to the environment and therefore has no need to evolve further Verworn conceives the idea that the reason it nevertheless does evolve is in order to become ever better adapted. What is not explained is where this impulse to better adaptation comes from. The impulse cannot be inherent in the amoeba for Verworn says himself that if it were not already adapted it would perish.

This is the kind of evidence that is continuously brought forward. The public at large, though denying it has blind faith in authority, is conditioned to accept patiently such somersaults in ideas. These things are simply looked upon as signs of great and reliable science. When such ideas are applied in physiology they do no great harm in individual cases because what is investigated in physiology can be verified under the microscope. Facts may be falsely interpreted, the most extraordinary discoveries may be construed, but mistakes will be corrected when the facts are put under the microscope. It is in fact possible to be a great physiologist yet a dunce when it comes to working out ideas. However, the harm becomes immense when someone has the pretention to suggest that the concepts belonging to the realm of physiology can be transferred to social and political life. In this sphere false and misinterpreted ideas remain undetected as they no longer refer to something physical which can be verified under a microscope. Here concepts themselves are the guiding factor and if they are foolish their application results in foolishness. These things must be recognized, they lead to great tragedies in life.

In view of present-day intellectual proficiency it is astonishing how much ignorance, how much sheer lack of knowledge prevails among prominent scientific investigators—thoughtlessness on the one hand, superficiality on the other as demonstrated by claims such as those made by the famous authority just mentioned. One asks in despair if a man in his position can really be unaware that what he suggests has already been attempted not very long ago. And then it was based on concepts that were equally obscure. In three volumes by Schäffle,⁸ the former Austrian prime minister, entitled “The Structure and Life of the Body Social”^* the attempt is made to depict the State as a cellular organism. So the experiment had been made already and had ended in failure. Schäffle also wrote a book with the title: “The Lack of Prospect in Social Democracy”^** ; to which Hermann Bahr,⁹ then a young man, wrote a rejoinder with the title: “The Lack of Insight of Herr Schäffle.”^***

This kind of ignorance results in repeated attempts to try again what has already been tried and has failed. Before acting on a general notion of this kind one would expect some one like Verworn to acquaint himself with a work such as that by Schäffle on the body social. It is interesting to ask: How does Verworn come to entertain these ideas at all? The answer could be that only a few decades earlier Virchow¹⁰ spoke about the structure of the human organism and the animal organism in general. Concerning the animal organism he said that it contains various systems of cells which are related and which interact with one another. But the relevant point is the way Virchow arrived at this idea of interacting systems of cells: He coined a word; calling the animal organism a “cell-State.” In other words, he takes the idea of the State and compares the animal organism to it. Verworn turns the idea around, he extracts the concept of the State and proceeds to apply to it the whole evolution of the animal organism.—One is reminded of the story of the ingenious Münchausen who pulls himself up by his forelock.

That is just one example of the superficiality that one meets at every turn. Here is someone who conceives the notion of how a State functions and transfers this notion to organisms. Someone else comes along and transfers his notion of how an organism functions over to the State. The whole subject remains obscure to the public in general who simply accept what is presented and have no idea that concepts, belonging to quite a different realm, are introduced. It is the kind of situation that is prevalent everywhere. People, trying to gain a firm hold on life, turn to popular science for guidance but do not find the security they long for. All that the highly respected science has to offer are theories built on shaky foundations. The most arbitrary notions are bandied about; statements are issued and no trouble taken to verify their correctness first. If only they were examined first one would realize the nonsense they often present. Take this statement by Verworn: “All systems of cells are dependent on others, which however does not mean that one kind of cell exercises a power to suppress another kind. On the contrary, cell systems mutually promote one an-other's specific quality in the interest of the social whole and consequently in the interest of each individual cell.”—Verworn is here referring to the human organism. Thus groups of cells are supposed to be dependent on each other but in such a way that it is to their mutual benefit. This arrangement is then held up as a model for arranging the various departments within a State. The notion is that, in order to function, brain cells; i.e., one kind of cells, need the cooperation of blood cells, while the brain cells at the same time place themselves at the service of the blood cells. One wonders what the outcome would be were these notions introduced into organizing a State. The whole idea is so preposterous that we need look at one aspect only to realize the insanity of the whole idea.

Verworn visualizes individual departments of State interacting the way that, according to him, individual systems of cells interact in an animal organism. This, he maintains, reveals the real concept of freedom. He continues: “A close study of the direction evolution has taken in the case of the cell State in the animal organism, provides us with guidelines for the direction we should take in order to establish a corresponding system within the social organism of the political State. It reveals to us among other things the true idea of individual freedom, seen here in its natural setting, free from all nonessential externalities with which it is often associated.”—So, according to Verworn, because blood cells are enjoying freedom in their interaction with brain cells, human freedom can be discovered by studying their relationship!—As for the nervous system, Verworn sees it as corresponding in the organism to the administrative machinery of the State. Not only is the comparison ridiculous, it is not even consistent for he overlooks that nerves lead to sense organs, so where do we have the eyes and ears of the State?

When one works with spiritual knowledge one is led to lofty, sublime concepts. They apply to the way things are related spiritually; they therefore apply also to the spiritual connections in man's animal-human organism. But when concepts are derived one-sidedly from the human organism as such, especially as done in this case, one simply gets nowhere. Yet in another statement Verworn carries the absurdity even further when he says: “The level of greater perfection of organic development in the animal cell-State is only reached at a further stage through centralization. At this stage the function of single cells and groups of cells is regulated and guided, according to momentary needs, from a center which is able to assess the need on the basis of information received.” Verworn suggests with these childish ideas that the brain receives information from other groups of cells and sends messages accordingly to the stomach, and so on.

And how, according to Verworn, does civilization, does culture come about? He says: “Culture is the sum total of all the ways and means created by man himself that enables him to be fully conscious of his environment and adapt to whatever occurrence happens in his life. Culture is nothing else than the totality of all the values man has created for the preservation and advancement of his life.”—To define culture in this way one must have lost all capacity of observation and taken leave of one's reason as well! Culture is supposed to be the sum total of values created by man for the preservation and advancement of life! The intellect must indeed have ceased to function for undoubtedly the culture created by man at present consists mainly in instruments designed to destroy. Looking at what culture has become in this domain it can hardly be described as preserving and advancing human life. Had it been described as created for oppression and destruction that would have been correct, at least in regard to a part of culture. But statements like those brought forward by Verworn one meets everywhere in modern science. Take the following example: “The production of cultural values is a physiological function not just in individuals but is to a large extent a specific function of the political State. This is because there are many cultural values which cannot be created by single individuals, as they are values which serve the whole community they need the cooperation of many. The political State as such is therefore an organism that produces cultural values just like the individual. Moreover, as it is obvious that a close relation exists between politics and physiology it is time that practical results were gained from this fact. One should reckon with the reality that a political State has a physiological basis, therefore information should be derived from the living organism concerning all matters of organization.”—Verworn would no doubt have said that information should be derived from his knowledge of the human organism.

These things are symptoms and must be brought to light. They delude the unhappy soul of man who at present is longing to know how and where it belongs within the great organism of the universe. It is nonsense of this kind that makes it so extraordinarily difficult to reach any understanding, particularly with people who are proficient in science. It would be an illusion to imagine that someone like Verworn could begin to understand even the most elementary aspects of spiritual science. While that is unthinkable there is at least the possibility that spiritual science, through its own power, will sustain more and more people so that eventually such scientific folly with its colossal pretentions will be overcome. It is no use trying to refute it and trying to be understood is hopeless. All that can be done is for a sufficient number of people to become aware of the danger threatening mankind if what today calls itself science is allowed to lead the way and to insinuate itself into realms where concepts become realities. This danger is a serious one of which one ought to be well aware; it is all the more important because this kind of superficiality, prevalent though it already is, will undoubtedly increase. These things are staring one in the face and it is so much to be wished that a sufficient number of people would look at them from a deeper aspect as we have to some extent just done.

Very much depends upon these things being evaluated rightly, but what happens is usually something like the following: A speech by Virchow appears in print; how is it received? Because Virchow is famous and regarded as a very important person it is taken for granted—though of course no one is supposed to suffer from blind faith in authority—that what such a famous man says can be accepted without question, it must be Gospel truth. Yet even if for once it was the truth one still ought to think through and evaluate for oneself what has been said. Take another example: at a meeting of scientists in Munich, Haeckel and Virchow discussed the liberty that prevailed in spreading scientific theories. Virchow suggested that conclusions should not be drawn indiscriminately from the theory of evolution. Much of what he said in opposition to Haeckel was justified. He was more particularly against Darwinism being introduced without reservations into schools, where it would only serve to close the minds to other views. In his speech Virchow said among other things the following: “It is to my credit that I know my own ignorance. It is important for me to know the exact extent of my ignorance of chemistry, otherwise I should forever labor under uncertainty.” Of course, it is commendable of Virchow to admit knowing nothing of chemistry. However, the unfortunate consequence is that his followers refuse to concern themselves with chemistry, simply saying they know nothing about it. On the other hand they look upon those who confess to spiritual-scientific knowledge as fools or visionaries. If only these people would let what Virchow says about chemistry apply also to spiritual science, then they would say: It is important that I know exactly to what extent I know nothing about spiritual science. But this is not said; the same honest attitude is not forthcoming. So you see, it is essential to recognize the consequences even when what is said is correct.

Nonetheless there was much of greatness in the 19th Century, but it is necessary to have a proper understanding of this greatness. Many things which are now part of mankind's general destiny, can be understood only in relation to what took place in the 19th Century. Souls without a rudder, souls without a firm grip on life who feel they do not belong, are numerous in our time. They are for the most part souls who, out of an instinctive need, long for something different from what traditional values can offer, souls who have been searching without finding anything which could give them a feeling of security, of belonging. So what is lacking, what is it that man needs?—I will not say to give him security once and for all, that is no more possible than it is possible for a single meal to sustain the whole of life. It is perhaps better to ask: What does man need to find a secure path through life? What he needs above all is a consciousness of belonging within the world. Weakness and inner discontent comes from the soul's feeling of isolation. Life's greatest question is in fact: Where and how do I fit into the world? This is putting it abstractly; but this abstract question expresses much of immense significance concerning the deeper aspect of human destiny.

When man today turns to natural science in order to reach a satisfying answer to the question: Where, as man, is my place in the world? then at best the natural-scientific world view will tell him where his physical body belongs within world evolution as a whole. Today it is known, at least up to a point, where man's physical body belongs in the evolutionary process. But the natural-scientific world view has absolutely nothing to say about how man's soul, let alone spirit, fits into world evolution. Compare for a moment the evolutionary process, as described by spiritual science, with that described by natural science. The natural-scientific theory of evolution leads to the animal kingdom—how this is arrived at is a separate issue—spiritual science leads us back through the different phases of earth evolution: through the Ancient Moon evolution, the Ancient Sun evolution to the Ancient Saturn evolution. It shows us that what lives within us as soul and spirit were germinally present already within the Ancient Saturn evolution. Nothing physically was then present, except conditions of warmth. We are shown how we are related to the primordial warmth, pervaded through and through by the individual beings of the Hierarchies who are still about us. We are placed within a cosmos filled with soul and spirit. That is the great difference.

Spiritual science shows our soul and spirit to be part and parcel of a universal all which it can describe in detail. Thus spiritual science alone can give the human soul that without which it feels annihilated. The dissatisfaction and insecurity felt by modern man reflect modern thinking. This thinking disregards the soul and declares that only the human body exists within the cosmic all. Another aspect is that the soul feels it has nothing to relate to, and that prevents it from finding inner strength. To reach inner strength of soul one must have attained concepts and ideas which depict the cosmic all as containing man as a being of soul and spirit; just as natural science depicts physical man as part of the physical evolution of the universe.

The courage shown today so admirable in regard to external issues must be extended to the inner life. In this respect modern man is far from courageous. He draws back from all aspects of spiritual reality with the consequence that so many human beings experience inner dissatisfaction and insecurity. Very much has to be done it is true, before distorted ideas give way to sound ones. Nowadays there is, for example, still a preoccupation with atomic theories, even though the earlier crude form has given way to ions and electrons. The modern view is that everything consists of atoms. Many are of the opinion that everything can be traced back to minute atomic structures. Matter is thought to consist of the tiniest of particles; i.e., atoms. And many scientists, in fact most, endow matter with force so that the particles of matter are supposed to attract and repel one another. At this point investigations come to an end. The 19th Century will be seen as a significant period in mankind's evolution: the time when the universe was explained as a structure of matter and force, a view that has been given classical expression in innumerable works.

This example shows the extent to which ideas must be readjusted before it is possible to evaluate what is needed now. Let us hold on to the fact that there are those whose speculations are mainly concerned with matter; they imagine that the world consists of atoms. How does this view compare with what spiritual science has to say? Certainly natural physical phenomena do lead us back to atoms, but what are these atoms? They reveal what they are at the moment the very first stage of spiritual perception has been attained. At the stage of imaginative perception atoms reveal what they truly are. I have spoken about this in various connections many years ago in public lectures. Those who speculate on matter come to the conclusion that space is empty and atoms whirl around in this empty space. Atoms are supposed to be the most solid entities in existence. That is simply not the case, the whole issue is based on illusion. To imaginative cognition atoms are revealed as bubbles and the reality is where the empty space is supposed to be. Atoms are blown up bubbles. In other words, in contrast to what surrounds them they are nothing. You know that where bubbles are seen in soda-water there is no water. Atoms are bubbles in that sense; where they are the space is hollow, nothing is there. And yet it is possible to push against it; impact occurs precisely because, in pushing against hollowness, an effect is produced. How can nothing produce an effect? Take the case of the space, practically empty of air, within an air-pump; there you see how air streams into nothingness. A wrong interpretation might imagine the empty space in the bulb of the air pump as containing a substance that forced in the air. That is exactly the illusion prevailing in regard to the atom. The opposite is true: atoms are empty—yet again not empty. There is after all something within these bubbles. And what is it?—This is also something about which have already spoken—what exists within the atom bubbles is ahrimanic substance. Ahriman is there. The whole system of atoms consists of ahrimanic substantiality. As you see this is a considerable metamorphosis of the ideas entertained by those who theorize about matter. Where in space they see something material we see the presence of Ahriman.

Force is another concept which in particular occupies those who speculate about force in their attempt to build up a world picture. Here again the very first stage of spiritual cognition shows that where force is supposed to be active there is in fact nothing. But where the force is thought not to be, there something is at work. It is exactly as if two people walked side by side and were observed by a third person. He looks towards them and, as they are walking a little apart, he looks between them and describes, not one or the other person, but the space between them. He is concerned, not with the two persons but the emptiness between them. That is the way those who theorize about force are looking at what is between the reality. Where it is said that a force of attraction is operating there is actually nothing, but to the left and the right there is the reality.

I would have to go into many things were I to explain in detail what I have put forward simply as facts. It is time such things were discussed, for clear ideas corresponding to facts are needed. Otherwise it is not possible to refute such brilliant nonsense as, for example, the theory of relativity which has made Einstein¹¹ a figure of renown. The theory of relativity seems so self-evident: for example, when a cannon is fired at a distance the sound is heard after a certain interval; if one moves nearer to the cannon the sound is heard sooner. Now, according to the theory of relativity if one moved with the speed of sound one would not hear it for one would go with it. If one went even faster than the sound, then one would hear something which is fired later, before one would hear what was fired earlier. This idea is generally accepted today but it has no relation whatever to reality. To go as fast as sound would mean to be sound and to hear none. These quite distorted ideas exist today as the theory of relativity and enjoy the greatest respect.

As it has already been said, physicists draw lines to depict currents of force, but where the force is supposed to be there is in fact nothing, whereas all around there is something. There is Lucifer, the luciferic element is there. If we want to depict what corresponds to actual reality we must place the luciferic element where force is placed by those who theorize about it. In the 19th Century someone wrote a book with the title “Force and Matter” in which the world is presented as consisting of force and matter. In the 20th Century we must substitute that title with “Lucifer and Ahriman,” for Lucifer and Ahriman are identical with what are described as force and matter. What can be described as force and matter are really described by Lucifer and Ahriman. You may say: this is dreadful! It is not dreadful for as I have often emphasized Lucifer and Ahriman are only dreadful when they are not balanced against each other. In mutual balance they serve the wise guidance of worlds. When Lucifer is placed on one side of the scales and Ahriman on the opposite side the balance between them must be achieved. It is a balance for which we must constantly strive.

In our own being this balance comes about in a remarkable way. You may remember my speaking about the extraordinary way we are related to the whole universe through our breathing. We draw a certain number of breaths per minute; if we count the number of breaths inhaled in one day we arrive at a number which corresponds to the days of a person's life, if he lives to the age of seventy. It really is quite astonishing: we live the same number of days as the number of breaths drawn in one day. And that is only one detail of the mighty concordance of harmonies within the universe. One of our breaths is related to the days of our life as one day of our life is related to our whole earthly life and the whole earthly life is related to a great Solar Year, the so-called Platonic Year, just as one day of life is related to the whole life and one breath to one day. Thus our breathing is in a wonderful inner relationship to the whole cosmos. If in our cognition we could achieve a tempo that corresponded to that of our breath then we would come into harmony with the whole universe in a way that befits man. People in the Orient attempt this through breathing exercises which are not suitable for Western man. He must seek this harmony along a more spiritual path.

All the exercises described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment are the spiritual correlate suited to the West, of that for which the Orient longs: to bring the rhythm of the process of breathing into the process of cognition. If our thinking had the same tempo as our breathing many secrets of the universe would be disclosed to us. The universe does disclose its secrets but unfortunately not to our cognition—if one can use the word, unfortunately in this connection—but to our dim feelings which are subject to many illusions. On the other hand our cognition, our thinking by means of which we form mental pictures, is too “short” when compared to the rhythm of the breath. The swing of the pendulum in our thinking is too short. In our ordinary normal external life, we are not able to enter, by means of thinking, into the great rhythm of the cosmos. Our thinking is too small. By contrast there is something in us which is too large: that is our will. In the will the pendulum swings out too far; its amplitude is too strong.

Thus we live between our thinking and our will. In thinking the swing of the pendulum is too short, in the will it is too wide. That is the reason our thinking forms mental pictures which must always be modified by others. The only way we can gradually come to an insight is by adopting various standpoints. As for the will, because it swings out too far the amount we are able to catch hold of is always too small. The will must therefore flow together with another will in order to reach its predestined goal. The will can only achieve something in connection with another will; i.e., the will of one incarnation together with the will of a former incarnation and so on.

I am sketching these things in merest outline; they all require elaboration. But my aim is to indicate the kind of concepts spiritual science must bring to man; concepts that will enable him to recognize where he belongs, now and in the future, within the universe. Our ordinary thinking is too narrow. It does not oscillate far enough compared with the wider oscillation of our breath. However, thinking in itself is not the goal, only the path. All human beings think, but they are not conscious of everything which passes through their soul. A thought has not reached its goal by merely being formulated, it must unite itself with our being. Thoughts which become conscious pass over into memory; but we assimilate a great deal which does not reach consciousness. Just think of all the experiences that have passed through your soul, some you have thought about, others not. Some you remember, others not, but all are within you; within your etheric body. After death they separate themselves from us and pass over into the world in general. There they become what we behold in the time between death and a new birth. They enable us to perceive the reality around us. Our thoughts unite themselves with what there constitutes our external world. Just as here, in the physical world, we need light in order to perceive so do we there need what separates itself from us. I have often described this process of our thoughts separating themselves from us after death to become our external world.

The content of our will becomes our inner world, not that which we have merely wished; but will that has become deed. What we have willed here, what we have imprinted into the external world, the actions we have carried out become our inner world in the time between death and a new birth, whereas our thoughts, our inner life, become what illumines our external world. The outer becomes the inner; the inner becomes the outer. It is important to keep that well in mind.

To use a popular saying: a great deal of water will have to flow under the bridge before official science wakes up to the fact that force and matter should be termed Lucifer and Ahriman, or come to realize that we tend towards one-sidedness in two directions: our thinking, related to breathing, has a tendency towards the luciferic; while our will, related to metabolism, has a tendency towards the ahrimanic. We oscillate between Lucifer and Ahriman. In the middle is the breathing process, the sphere of equilibrium, where we partake of the great harmony of the universe. That is true science, that is experienced, not abstract science.

And now let us turn from spiritual science and compare it to the verse in the Old Testament where it says. “And He breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” It is not said that power of will or of thinking was bestowed upon man; it is the breath that is emphasized. You can sense that this primordial revelation stems from a knowledge very different from that of modern spiritual science. But you will also sense the marvelous concordance, the marvelous agreement that exists between the findings of spiritual science today and the content of this and other great historical documents dealing with mankind's evolution. It goes without saying that the revelations in the Old Testament were not arrived at in the same way as the findings of modern spiritual science, but for that very reason the agreement between them is all the more significant. We shall see in the next lecture that this agreement applies also to other historical documents such as the New Testament, especially to the Mystery of Golgotha.

My aim today was to call your attention to what is needed at present and also to point out how very difficult it is to come to any understanding, especially in the sphere of science, with people who hold on to outdated ideas which they regard as infallible. As I once said: the infallibility of the Pope may be questioned but the authority of a great many people is thought to be infallible by those who labor under the illusion that they are above taking things on authority.

• 7 . Max Verworn 1863–1921
• 8 . Albert Schaffle 1831–1903 Sociologist Austrian Minister of Trade.
• *. “Bau and Leben des socialen Korpers”
• **. “Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie”
• 9 . Hermann Bahr 1863–1934
• ***. “Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schäffle”
• 10. Rudolf Vischow 1821–1902 Founder of Cellular Pathology
• 11. Albert Einstein 1879–1955 Physicist, formulated the Theory of Relativity

I spoke last time about the fact that, had evolution run its intended course, earthly man would not have strayed from his appointed place in the cosmic order. This is well known and is imaginatively expressed in various religions in such symbols as that of original sin and the like. Viewed in the light of spiritual science this aspect of mankind's evolution is directly connected with the fact that man's essential nature—that is, earthly man's essential nature—manifests itself through breathing. I indicated last time that the rhythm of the breath, and with it knowledge, cognition, was predestined to be man's most significant experience during his earth-existence. Last time I summarized briefly things spoken about on earlier occasions, namely that the rhythm of breathing is in wonderful harmony with the cosmos. I mentioned how, in a normal human life, the number of days equals the number of breaths drawn in one day. And I pointed to other numerical relationships which give evidence of the harmonious agreement that exists between our microcosmic breathing process and the great cosmic processes within which we are placed.

It can be shown, not only through the findings of spiritual science, but also through external observation, that the rhythm of breathing, more than anything else, shows man to be a microcosm, a little world. Man's breathing copies the processes of the Great World, the macrocosm. However, in regard to man, far too little attention is paid to slight differences, to individual characteristics. The fact is that there are no two people whose breathing is exactly the same, because each individual sounds, as it were, a different chord within the cosmos. However, in man's present earth-existence everything connected with the rhythm of the breath remains unconscious. Only under abnormal conditions or through some illness does the process of breathing become conscious. Our normal consciousness functions at a level above the process of breathing and is, as a consequence, not so closely bound up with the cosmos. If cognition had been based on the rhythm of breathing instead of processes in the brain our whole relation to, and knowledge of, the world would be different. It is because our cognition is dependent on the brain that we were forced out of what should have been our normal relationship with the macrocosm.

This secret of the breath is indicated in religious records, such as the Old Testament, when it says that the Divine Spiritual Being, concerned with the guidance of mankind, breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul. In the sense of ancient atavistic clairvoyance this is an absolutely true rendering of the facts. As far as his intellect is concerned man has a different relationship to the cosmos before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. This is because the brain and not the breath became the bodily foundation for knowledge.—In order to deepen our understanding we have considered the Mystery of Golgotha from many aspects; today we shall approach it from yet another.

It is true to say that before man was exposed to the influence of Lucifer, his knowledge, indeed his whole relation to the world, was intended to be different. Knowledge was to have been based on the rhythm of the breath. But before the Mystery of Golgotha, due to the Luciferic influence, the process of cognition developed higher up in man's organism and became related to the head and sense organs instead of to the chest and breathing. This is looking at it purely from the point of view of the body but in this connection the body itself has a deeper significance. The difference in man before and after the Mystery of Golgotha is not likely to be perceived or acknowledged by natural science. For although the difference is considerable it can be ascertained only by subtler means Before the Mystery of Golgotha, as Anthroposophy explains, man had as a matter of course a relationship with spiritual beings in the cosmos, with the beings of the higher Hierarchies. But what was the relationship? Among the beings of the Hierarchies we distinguish to begin with, immediately bordering on the human realm, the Angeloi, the Archangeloi and so on. Therefore the nearest beings to whom we look up, when we turn to the spiritual world are the Angeloi. As human beings we have a relationship to the Angeloi and they in turn feel their relationship to man. It is not a matter of indifference to the Angeloi what kind of relationship they have to man. When we turn our attention to this relationship we can begin to understand the difference in human beings before and after the Mystery of Golgotha.

The remarkable fact is that before the Mystery of Golgotha an intimate relation existed between the activity and being of the Angeloi and the human intellect. One could say that before the Mystery of Golgotha the Angeloi dwelt mainly in man's intellect. Man knew nothing of this but as a consequence he had, though in decreasing strength, atavistic, imaginative clairvoyance. When I said that before the Mystery of Golgotha the Angeloi dwelt in man's intellect, this holds good for his life between birth and death. It was different in man's life between death and new birth. Then the Angeloi, and especially the Angels belonging to individual human beings, dwelt in the memory man had of his sense impressions. They dwelt in pictures of what had surrounded man in the world of the senses on earth. The result was that in his life between death and new birth—before the Mystery of Golgotha—man had a vivid knowledge of what took place on earth. In a sense one could say that the Angeloi carried up to man knowledge of what was happening on earth.

This gives an idea of man's relation to the Angeloi before the Mystery of Golgotha. Afterwards this relationship gradually changed. So what relationship does man have now to the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi? Now it is the case that, although we are not conscious of it, the Angeloi dwell in our sense perceptions between birth and death. When we open our eyes and look around at everything that surrounds us affecting our senses we are not aware that our Angel dwells in the sun rays which penetrate our eyes making objects visible. The beings of the Angeloi live in waves of sound, in the rays of light and color and in other sense perceptions. The reason man does not know he is surrounded by the Angeloi is because he transforms his perceptions into mental pictures and into these the Angeloi do not enter. It has often been emphasized in our lectures that the spiritual world must be visualized all around us and not in some far away cloud-cuckoo-land. The spiritual world is literally everywhere about us and it is possible to explain quite concretely in what sense it surrounds us as in this case in regard to the Angeloi. Yet no consciousness of the Angeloi enters our intellect between birth and death. By contrast man is at present very conscious of his relation with the Angeloi between death and new birth because then the Angeloi dwell in his intellect.

What I have just explained has significant consequences for human life. Let us go back for a moment to man as he was before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then the Angeloi, particularly his own Angel dwelt in his intellect; this made his senses in particular accessible to luciferic powers. In ancient times man's consciousness in general was accessible to luciferic influences. This has changed since the Mystery of Golgotha. As I have just explained the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi who weave and move—borne on rays of light and color and on wings of sound—do not penetrate our intellect. As a consequence our intellect is exposed to the attacks of ahrimanic powers during our life between birth and death. Whereas before the Mystery of Golgotha man was exposed essentially to the attacks of Lucifer; since the Mystery of Golgotha the intellect is particularly exposed to the influence of ahrimanic powers. Their main objective is to stifle man's consciousness of his connection with the spiritual world. All the tendencies to materialism that man develops in his life of thought stem from this direct relationship between his intellect and the attacks of Ahriman. And if the materialistic tendencies, which are fully described in these lectures, have the upper hand in our time, we must not forget that they originate in the confusion which Ahriman strives to promote in the human intellect.

What is the real significance of these things? As already mentioned the process of breathing is subconscious, but that to which I have just referred; i.e. man's connection with the Angeloi, is not conscious either. That however lies above our consciousness. What happens in our breathing lies below our consciousness; what happens within us through the interaction with the spiritual world nearest to us lies above our consciousness. Within this process above our consciousness is actively working the force that entered the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas earlier it was the force of Jehovah that worked in man. If we deepen our insight into the spirit—I say expressly into the spirit—of a writing such as the Book of Job, and realize how graphically it depicts the sway of the Jehovah force in human evolution, it gives us a picture of how the force worked which gave man life through the breath. As described there it worked in the forces of heredity down to the third and fourth generations.

In order to discover the corresponding force at work after the Mystery of Golgotha we must turn to the Christ. Just as the force of Jehovah is related to man's process of breathing so is the force of Christ, indeed the whole Mystery of Golgotha, related to that process I have just described as lying above man's consciousness. One could say that man's breathing has been deprived of consciousness through the luciferic influence. In compensation man is given the possibility to attain that higher consciousness of which I spoke; this will mean for man to unite with the Angeloi through the senses and the intellect. To compensate as it were for that which was taken from him; i.e., cognition through the rhythm of the breath, man is to be given, through the impulse flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha, cognition through a higher consciousness. There were people of deeply religious natures in the Orient who strove, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to bring consciousness into their breathing. To imitate this procedure today is harmful. The aim of the breathing exercises, described in Oriental writings, was to irradiate the process of breathing with consciousness. But in regard to certain higher knowledge man's earthly consciousness is doomed to be powerless. These ancient practices are being imitated today because it is not realized that through Lucifer man has been deprived of the possibility to irradiate his breathing with knowledge.

He is instead, since the Mystery of Golgotha, to attain a connection with the spiritual world through the development of a higher consciousness. If we were able to cognize; i.e. attain knowledge through our breath, then with every inhalation we would be conscious, not of inhaling air, but of taking in the force of Jahve; and with every exhalation we would know we exhaled Jahve. In a similar way man is now to become conscious that the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi approach him and retreat from him rhythmically; that the spiritual world flows towards him and again ebbs away as it were. But man will attain this higher consciousness only if the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha influences him more and more.

Fundamental issues can sometimes only be characterized by the use of strange words. In order to describe truth one must not shrink from using appropriate terms. Through Lucifer's influence the process of breathing became dulled as I have just described. True, it is meant pictorially, but if rightly understood one will feel the objective reality in the picture. Jahve's original intention was for man to be conscious of Him in every breath drawn into the body and conscious of His withdrawal with every exhalation. But Lucifer became Jahve's opponent and the consciousness, inherent in the force of Jahve, was shut off from man's consciousness. And now comes the point where one perforce must use strange, severe words in order to give a true description: Jahve had to forget human beings, insofar as their life on earth is concerned, because He could not enter their consciousness. It really did happen that the Being from whom the Jahve-force issued and other spiritual beings within the spiritual world forgot man, just as we may forget something. They forgot man, lost him from their consciousness. The consciousness was rekindled through the Mystery of Golgotha. If from primordial times, up to the Mystery of Golgotha, the tragic words were spoken: And the Gods forgot mankind; then since the Mystery of Golgotha we must say: And it is once more the Gods' will, by and by, to remember mankind. For the sake of human beings the Gods gradually will penetrate with their forces just that from which man otherwise would grasp none of the spirit: the wisdom connected with the human brain, the life of ideation connected with the human nervous system. Heaven wishes to behold the earth, to behold from above what is below. The necessary window was opened when the Being of Christ, through the baptism in the Jordan, entered the personality of Jesus. The words: “This is my beloved Son, this day have I begotten him” denotes the fact that what is above will once more behold what is below, that the forces from above can now stream in and out of that which is below, not however through man's breathing but through his thoughts and ideation. The time, since the Mystery of Golgotha, has been essentially a time of preparation. We are now at the turning point when something else must come, than was previously in the working of the Mystery of Golgotha. That we should become aware of this is of immense importance.

Everything that has taken place so far has been in the nature of preparation. Up till now only exceptional individuals have been able—through spiritual knowledge—to draw near the Mystery of Golgotha. The time has come when a greater part of mankind, through spiritual science, must come to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. Why is this so essential?

Many secrets are connected with an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. People often ask: How can I find a relationship to Christ? Certainly it is a question that is justified. But anyone with insight will know that it is a question that cannot be answered just like that. Let me make a comparison: we see objects by means of our eyes, but the eyes we do not see. For the eyes to be able to see they must be unable to see themselves. They see mirror images but not themselves. That which does the seeing cannot itself be seen. Since the Mystery of Golgotha man must see the spiritual world through the impulse coming from Christ just as he sees external colors through his eyes. We do not see the eyes through which the colors, etc. are seen, nor do we see the Christ impulse through which we see the spiritual world. This is why the Mystery of Golgotha is veiled in mystery and the history of the event is also veiled. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the historical event associated with it cannot be discovered by historic means. To seek for Christ historically like any other event in history would be like trying to induce the eye to see itself. It is inherent in the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ Jesus cannot be found like Plato, Socrates or any other historical personality, through historical documents. It lies in its very nature that accounts of it are not historical, they were given by human beings who were inspired. Accounts of the Mystery of Golgotha can always be proved not to be historical records in the usual sense. We would become spiritually ill in the course of human evolution in the moment it became possible to include the Mystery of Golgotha among other historical events. Nor in that case would we be able to see it rightly; if we saw it historically it would be like an injured eye seeing itself. A healthy eye sees objects but not itself. If a chip has become embedded in the eye it will see a dark space before it and begin to perceive itself; but that is abnormal perception. Similarly an abnormal perception of the Mystery of Golgotha would come about if it did not have an aspect which externally is imperceptible and therefore enables man to perceive spiritually. This is a secret connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. The remarkable thing is that this strange situation did not exist for man before the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times before Christ had descended to the earth man knew, through his atavistic clairvoyance, that Christ was there above in the spiritual world and that He would come. Hence there is remarkable prophetic evidence which shows there were human beings who were conscious, through direct personal experience, of the Christ who was to come. It is a paradox that man could know of Christ as long as He had not yet come to the earth. From the moment He had come man could no longer know of Him in the same way. Just as one experiences the eye when one perceives, so the Christ-event had to be experienced in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, and not known historically.

It is interesting to see how these things, which I am now explaining in the light of spiritual science, are dealt with in the Gospels. But we must leave that to some other occasion.

Thus it was inevitable that from early on, in the development of Christianity, faith was emphasized rather than knowledge. Christians were not to expect knowledge concerning the Mystery of Golgotha but experience it inwardly through faith. Yet the Mystery of Golgotha is meant to illumine our world of concepts, for ideas born of faith are also concepts, are also our mental pictures. Furthermore, that is the realm in which the impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha meets all the attacks of Ahriman. Our intellect is the arena where the impulse of Christ fights the impulse of Ahriman. Man's evolution, his purely external evolution on earth, will take its course and Ahriman will not be as fettered as he is now. The “Thousand Years” will elapse and man will need a different force, he must have something over and above mere faith with which to establish the Christ impulse in his earthly consciousness. What is this different force?

This different force is spiritual knowledge through which man spiritually should make his own what we call the impulse of Christ. It will enable him to find within himself the strong force with which to protect the Christ impulse in his consciousness against the attacks of Ahriman. The Christ impulse is established in the world and Ahriman cannot abolish it. That is beyond his strength. Ahriman cannot alter the fact that Christ came into the world through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But what he can do is so to transform the concept, the mental picture of Christ in the human intellect that man experiences a pretense, instead of the Christ impulse. This means he creates a false picture of Christ. Man is exposed to the danger that while he may talk about Christ his intellectual picture of Christ is inspired by Ahriman. Those who are able to review modern cultural developments in their true forms seldom find any accurate picture of Christ in men's mind; more often than not they are distorted by Ahriman. By no means is it always the real Christ whom the adherents of Christianity call Christ. Ahriman clouds and confuses the human intellect in many ways in order to attain his goal, not least in those places where men are apt to seek religious counsel. There one can encounter peculiar views. Suppose one asks a Catholic theologian about his real opinion concerning the Virgin Mary. Certainly most would only give the reply he had been instructed to give, but let us leave that aside. There are some who have developed theological cognition beyond the level of mere instruction. In such cases one invariably finds a strange similarity between the cosmic picture of the heavenly church and the earthly woman Mary. This view comes about because for the Catholic theologian the Virgin Mary is identical with the symbolic woman in the Apocalypse who has the moon beneath her feet, the sun at her breast and the seven stars above her head. Thus, in order to visualize the meaning of the spiritual concept it is transposed into an earthly reality. Certain passages in Catholic writings demonstrate that Catholic theologians still look upon the Virgin Mary as identical with the woman in the sun with the moon at her feet and the stars above her head. Here the spiritual, the cosmic-spiritual is seen completely in terms of the earthly; and in fact the cosmic aspect is disappearing more and more through Ahrimanic influence. Nowhere does it disappear more thoroughly than from man's conception of Christ. There is very little inclination today to acknowledge Christ as the Great Cosmic Spirit who descended from cosmic heights to dwell in the human body of Jesus of Nazareth. Many people have an aversion to admit it; they believe it truly Christian to bring as little as possible of a cosmic aspect into the concept of Christ. This attitude would have been quite impossible for a theologian in the 14th century. This fact may not be demonstrated by history because external history is itself distorted.

Ahriman's whole interest lies in diverting man away from the spiritual, towards the material. What is material is indeed also spiritual but its spirit lies hidden within the earth. Ahriman does need much cunning and the use of many a trick in order to prevent man from seeing any cosmic aspect in the personality of the Christ. Nevertheless one finds descriptions of Christ which are strikingly ahrimanic; they are bereft of everything supersensible and are deliberately made to appear purely human. Particularly in social-democratic literature is this very common; not to mention painters who have done everything possible to eliminate every suggestion of a cosmic quality from their figure of Christ. Some years ago there was an exhibition here in Berlin of paintings of Christ, a whole series of ahrimanic paintings one after the other. And then there are all the self-appointed preachers who officially or unofficially speak in a sectarian manner about the Christ with no awareness that Ahriman has them by the collar and induces them to present his version of the Christ impulse and not one in which the true impulse of Christ is effective.

The true and therefore effective Christ impulse can in our time be presented by no other means than spiritual science. For spiritual science is concerned with spiritual perception which is attained outside the body and therefore where the possibility exists of beholding again the Christ in His true form. As long as one is within the body the eye can indeed behold colors but it cannot behold itself. When one betakes oneself out of the body in spiritual perception one beholds the impulse of Christ through the Christ impulse itself; just as when one sees oneself from the outside one sees the eye. What man can find in spiritual science he cannot find in any historical account to be a description of Christ in His spiritual form. Just as spiritual science can describe a faculty of sight which is on a level higher than that of the eye, so it can describe the Christ impulse through which the spiritual world becomes visible. It is therefore possible to attain insight into the Christ impulse, but insight does not prevent attacks from Ahriman. They must be met with courage. The reason people do not want to know about the concept of Christ attained through spiritual science is because of a subconscious fear that as soon as the Christ impulse is understood it will arouse Ahriman's opposition. How can this ahrimanic opposition be recognized at the present time?

In the future it will take other forms. Today it comes to expression in the fact that we have a natural science and accounts of history both of which are ahrimanic and they consequently present cultural development and historical events their way. The very nature of concepts developed on this basis excludes the Christ impulse. In these concepts Ahriman must inevitably work because he works in man. With concepts such as these it is indeed possible to evolve a philosophy of life which includes a general concept of God but they can never lead to an understanding of Christ. Christ may be spoken of but is not understood. That is the case even in a philosopher like Lotze.¹² And Harnack,¹³ having no ideas of his own on the subject, mentions the name of Christ only because it appears in religious documents in the Bible and so on. Other theologians fail to speak of the real Christ for similar reasons. Thus Harnack's Christ has no other attributes than those applicable to a universal Godhead; or he may go to the other extreme and simply describe the man Jesus.

To understand Christ through spiritual science it is necessary to grasp the spiritual-scientific concept of Christ in the full awareness that all external knowledge—whether in the form of natural science or history—far from leading to an understanding of the Christ impulse actually opposes it. This opposition is there in anti-Christians today who, in contrast to mere belief, attempt to apply natural-scientific or historical concepts to the Christ event. It is essential to understand that there has to be an inner opposition because here two worlds are in conflict. We must enter courageously into the conflict between Christ and Ahriman. A comprehensive view of life will accept that the conflict exists and expresses itself for example in the fight between Christ and Ahriman.

I have often said that Lucifer acts in partnership with Ahriman. They work together. They both have great interest in deluding man concerning the necessity of this inner conflict. They therefore go all out to eliminate the realm that opposes them. To this end they conjure up in man's mind ideas such as: “In tune, in harmony with the infinite.” Why do such mental pictures arise in man? They do because he is inwardly too much of a coward to face the conflict and much prefers Lucifer-Ahriman to invent “harmony with the infinite” for him. However it is an attitude that is the equivalent of going through life blindfolded, seeking only appeasement. Modern man shrinks from the many-sided battle to attain spiritual insight; this attitude is bound to call up opposing forces just as they appear when something right, which ought to be furthered is left neglected. It is because man, during recent centuries, has endeavoured to avoid the inner battle between powers which must of necessity oppose one another, that this battle assumes such a terrible form in the external world today. This consequence is as inevitable as the expulsion from Paradise was a consequence of the luciferic temptation. We see man today, in all spheres of life, being satisfied with creating a mere semblance of inner peace for himself. It is an inner peace which has a meaning only between birth and death. In so doing he prevents one side of the inner conflict to come to expression, of course that to which he prevents expression is always the Christ impulse. Thus the natural conflict has to find an outlet some other way. Now, when you find in various publications descriptions of the so-called contradictions supposed to exist in my writings you will now be able to view these with deeper insight and recognize the ahrimanic impulse in them.

Instead of overcoming the forces he necessarily must overcome, by facing them, man tries to avoid the conflict. This has all kinds of adverse effects. If one tries to avoid the conflict it will make its appearance in a different form. Nothing pleasant is prepared by those who strive to do away with the conflict. Working with spiritual science one continuously meets people who, out of their deepest needs, ask: Why is there evil, why is there pain in the world? These questions are often asked in an attempt to grasp how it can be that a good God allows evil to exist. In an attempt to answer such questions one may draw attention to the fact that no one will deny that all the good in the world, all that is excellent and full of wisdom is a manifestation of the Godhead. Thus if it is felt that God's goodness must be vindicated then we already stand on the premise that wisdom is to be ascribed to a good God. But why does a good, wise God allow evil to exist? To this the following may be said: Begin by visualizing a minute pain, let us say you cut yourself and feel a slight pain. Every pain arises when something is exposed to any kind of destruction. It is just that it is not always so obvious how the pain first came about. Let us now imagine that it is not a question of a cut by a knife but that a particularly sensitive spot on the body is exposed to very hot sun rays. This may not at once result in actual blisters but the beginning is there. Therefore a change in the tissue has occurred which is felt as a slight pain. If now the heat of the sun acted more strongly on an even more sensitive spot a greater injury would result. And now imagine that two particularly sensitive places in our head were, aeons ago, exposed to the rays of the sun. Man at that time had not the faculty of sight but the two places in his head became painful whenever the sun rose. At these places the tissue was injured and pain arose in consequence. This process went on for long ages and the healing resulted in the formation of the eyes; they came into being as a result of injury. True as it is that the eyes convey to us the beauty of the world of color so is it also true that they could only come into being through injury caused by the heat of the sun to places particularly sensitive to light.

Nothing in the way of joy, happiness, blessedness has come about except through pain. To refuse pain and opposition is to refuse beauty, greatness and goodness. Here one enters a domain where one can no longer think as one pleases; here one is subject to what in the Mysteries was called “iron necessity.” True as it is that great harmony exists in the world, true as it is that the present harmony had of necessity to arise through pain, it is equally true that the Christ impulse cannot be attained through painless, sensuous feelings of well-being such as those conveyed by the idea of being “in tune with the infinite.” The Christ impulse can only be reached by courageously facing the conflict that plays itself out in our intellect—or in our consciousness in general—between the Christ impulse and the ahrimanic impulse. It is a conflict we cannot lightheartedly distance ourselves from by saying “without harmony we remain unfulfilled; in order to attain the Christ impulse we must rise above the conflict in our understanding.” This can be seen quite concretely in the most diverse instances. For example someone may strive to understand the world through natural science; as a consequence he fails to find the Christ impulse. He may later learn to understand the world through spiritual science and as a consequence he now does find the Christ impulse. In such a case it is essential to recognize that one is faced with a contradiction, but in the very contradiction there is also agreement. Contrary to the belief of many it is not a question of adhering solely to one or the other science, nor can one be substituted for the other. Rather could they be compared with the right and left ear; both are necessary for proper hearing for the very reason that the hearing in one ear does not coincide with that of the other ear. What matters is not whether two things can be made to agree but in what sense there is harmony between them.

• 12. Rudolf Lotze 1817–1881 German Physician and Philosopher
• 13. Adolf von Harnack 1851–1930 Professor of Theology

During these last days we have taken leave of a dear friend and loyal collaborator who has left the physical plane, Herman Joachim. He could be seen here in our circle practically every week during the war years. When we contemplate the event of death of someone near to us—filled with sentiments engendered by knowledge which we seek through spiritual science—we may find through this event also our own relation to the spiritual world. We look back on the one hand to the time we were privileged to share with him, but we also look forward into that world which is receiving the soul of the one with whom we were together. We remain united with him, for the bonds that bind us together are spiritual and cannot be severed through the event of physical death.

The name Herman Joachim is like a beacon, throwing its light far and wide, ahead of the one we have lost as far as the physical plane is concerned. It is a name that is very much connected with the development of art in the 19th century; particularly in the sphere of aesthetic interpretation of music. Indeed there is no need for me to explain here what this name stands for in recent cultural achievements. However, if Herman Joachim—who has gone into the spiritual world with all his incomparable and beautiful qualities—had come among us as someone unknown, even then, those whose good fortune it was to know him and share with him their endeavours, would have counted him among the most valuable personalities of their lives. The strength of his personality, the greatness and radiance of his soul would ensure it.

There came to expression in his human relationships with others a cultural artistic quality of a high order, passed on to him from his father. One could say that on the one hand this artistic influence came to expression in everything Herman Joachim thought and did, but it was carried and enhanced by the spirituality of his own will, his own feelings and by his striving for spiritual insight. While his father's great influence held sway in the blood so was there something in Herman Joachim's spiritual makeup which had a beautiful beginning in his life by the fact that Herman Grimm—this distinguished and unique representative of Central European cultural life—held his hand in blessing over him when a child. For Herman Grimm was godfather to Herman Joachim. I was very pleased to learn this as you will understand after the many things I have said, especially in this circle, in appreciation of Herman Grimm's contributions to cultural life in recent times. When a dear friend of his, the unique personality Walter Robert Tornow died, Herman Grimm wrote: “He departs from the society of the living and is received into the society of the dead. One feels one ought to announce to the dead just who it is that joins their ranks.” Herman Grimm did not intend these words to apply only to the one for whom he spoke them. He meant them in the sense that they express a feeling which is present in human beings in general, when someone near departs from the physical into the spiritual world.

When we look back to characteristic experiences which we were privileged to share with someone who has died, then these experiences become windows through which we can follow the further life of a now infinite being. For every human individuality is an infinite being and the experiences we shared can be compared to windows through which we look out on an unlimited landscape. However there are moments in a human life which are of special significance, it is then possible to look deeper into a human individuality. In such moments the secrets of the spiritual world reveal themselves with particular power. It is also in such moments that much of what in ordinary life is the goal of noble, intense striving, is revealed in comprehensive thought pictures permeated with feeling.

I venture to describe a moment of this kind because I consider it symptomatic of Herman Joachim. He had been connected with our movement for years when in Cologne, not long after we had become personally acquainted, we had a conversation. During this conversation it was revealed to me how this man had related his innermost soul to the spiritual powers which live and weave through the cosmos.—Perhaps I can put it in these words: I was able to recognize that he had discovered that there is an important link between responsible human souls and those Divine-spiritual powers whose wisdom governs worlds. In significant moments of his life an individual may come face to face with these powers. In such moments when he puts to himself the question: How do I unite with the world-guiding spiritual powers that are revealed to my inner sight? How can it become possible for me to think of myself as a responsible link in the world's spiritual guidance which, in my innermost self, I know I am meant to be?—Thus it was revealed to me what Herman Joachim consciously felt and experienced with all the deep seriousness of his being in such moments when man's relation to the spiritual world becomes manifest to him.

Herman Joachim had gone through many difficulties. When this endless calamity under which we all suffer broke out^* it brought him great hardship. He was in Paris where he had lived for years and where he had found his dear life companion. But now his duty obliged him to return to his former profession as a German officer. Nevertheless it was a duty with which he also had a deep inner connection. He had already fulfilled his task as officer on important occasions, doing his duty not only with expertise but with compassion and self-sacrifice. There are many who have grateful memories because they have benefitted from the true humaneness and social friendliness with which he fulfilled his calling. For myself I often remember the conversations we had during these three years of grief and human suffering, conversations in which he revealed himself as a man who was able to follow with far-reaching understanding the events of our time. There was no question of his objective judgement being clouded by thoughts of either hatred or love for the one or the other side. His intelligent assessment made him fully aware of the gravity of the situation facing us all. Nevertheless, because of his trust in the spiritual guidance of the world he was full of hope and confidence.

Herman Joachim belongs to those who accept spiritual science in a completely matter-of-fact way as something self-evident; while at the same time this matter-of-factness protects them from superficial surrender to anything of a spiritualistic nature. Such souls are not easily led astray into what can be the greatest danger: fanciful illusions and the like. After all, such illusions have their roots in a certain self-indulgent egoism. Herman Joachim had no inclination whatever towards egotistical mysticism but all the more towards great ideals, towards powerful, effective ideas of spiritual science.

He was always concerned about what each individual can do in his own situation in life, to make spiritual science effective. As a member of the Freemasons he had looked carefully into the nature of masonic practices and had resolved to do all he could to bring the life of spiritual knowledge into masonic formalism. His high position within Freemasonry enabled him to make his own, to an exceptional degree, all the profound but now formalized and rigidified knowledge accumulated over centuries. Just because of his high position he saw the possibility to bring the life and spiritual power which can only come from spiritual science into this rigidified knowledge. His aim was to enable it to enter rightly into the stream of human culture. Anyone who is aware how hard he worked towards this goal during these difficult years, how he pursued it with earnestness and integrity; anyone who realizes the strength of his will and the volume of his work in this sphere will also know how much the physical plane has lost with Herman Joachim.—I am often reminded in cases like this of someone, regarded as belonging to the intelligentsia, who is recorded as saying: No man is irreplaceable; if one goes, another steps forward to take his place. It is obvious that such an expression reveals a gross ignorance of real life; for real life shows in fact the opposite. The truth is rather that in regard to what a man accomplishes in life no one can be replaced. This truth strikes us all the more in exceptional cases such as the present one. The death of Herman Joachim strongly reminds us of the working of karma in human life. Only an understanding of human karma, the comprehension of the great karmic questions of destiny, enables us to come to terms with the death of someone, at a comparatively early age, leaving behind an important and necessary life task.

I have followed day by day the soul of our dear friend slowly leaving this realm, in which he was to accomplish so much, and entering another realm where we can find him only through the strength of our spirit, a realm from which he will be an even stronger helper than before. During this time of taking leave I was strongly aware of something else; namely, that human beings themselves demand the necessity of karma; demand it with all their inner courage and strength of spirit. It becomes evident to one's inner sight when experiencing a death of this kind. In these circumstances things must often be spoken of which can be spoken of only in our circles, but then, it is also within our spiritual movement, that human beings can find the great strength which reaches beyond death, the strength that encompasses both life and death.

Herman Joachim's soul stands clearly before me. So it stood clearly before me when, out of his own free will, he took on a spiritual task. And it comes vividly before me how he is taking hold of this task now. His death is revealed to me as something he freely chose because, from that other world his soul is able to work more actively and with stronger forces; forces more appropriate to what is necessary. Under these circumstances one may even speak of the death of an individual as a necessity, as a duty, at a quite specific moment. I know that not everyone will find what I am saying a consoling or a strengthening thought; but I also know that there are souls today to whom these thoughts can be a support when they are faced with the kind of difficulties which in our time must be endured with pain and sorrow, difficulties that one comes up against when trying to solve important and necessary tasks, difficulties that arise from the fact that we are in the physical world, incarnated in physical bodies in a materialistic environment. Yet in all our pain and sorrow we may gradually come to value the thought that death, as far as the physical plane is concerned, was chosen by someone in order to be better able to fulfill his task.

We may balance this thought against the pain which our dear friend, the wife of Herman Joachim, is suffering. We may balance it against the pain we ourselves feel over our dear friend, we may attempt to enoble our pain by thinking of him in the light of a sublime thought such as the one I have just put before you. This thought may not ease or tone down the pain, but its spiritual insight can shine like a sun into the pain and illumine our understanding for the necessity that governs man, the necessity of human destiny. Thus the event of the death of someone near to us can become an experience which brings us into contact with the spiritual world. For if our thoughts about him strengthen our soul's propensity towards the realms in which the departed sojourns then we shall not lose him; we shall remain actively united with him. Furthermore, if we grasp the full implication of the thought that someone who loved his life more than most, nevertheless accepted death because of an iron necessity, then that thought will truly express our spiritual-scientific view of the world. If we honor our friend in this way we shall remain united with him. And his life companion, left here on the physical plane, shall know that we remain united with her in thoughts of the loved one; that we, her friends, remain close to her.

The death of our dear friend Herman Joachim is one of several bereavements suffered within our society during this difficult time, one which was for me especially sad, one I have not yet been able to speak about. The great personal loss and close involvement prevents me from touching on many aspects of this bereavement.

A great many of those present will remember with love a dear and loyal member whom we have also lost from the physical plane in recent months, Olga von Sivers, the sister of Marie Steiner. She was not a personality one would come to know immediately at first encounter; she was a thoroughly modest and unassuming person. But my dear friends, setting aside the pain Marie Steiner and I suffer over this irreplaceable loss I venture to say something else about Olga von Sivers. She belongs to those among us who, from the beginning, went straight to the root of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. She took it up with deep understanding and warmth of soul. When Olga von Sivers devoted herself to such matters she did so with her whole being for that was her nature. And she was indeed a human being in the fullest sense as everyone connected with her will know. She strongly rejected everything which nowadays, as a kind of mystical Theosophy, distorts man's inner path and leads spiritual life into wrong channels. She had a keen sense of discernment when it came to distinguishing between those spiritual impulses which belong to our time and advance man's inner progress; and others which arise from quite different impulses. The latter are often disguised as theosophical or other mystical striving. Olga von Sivers is an outstanding example of someone taking hold, in a fundamental way, of the spiritual truths which we in our movement especially strive to attain. Despite her full participation in our work it was not in her nature to neglect or disregard in any way the many and often difficult duties imposed upon her by external life. She absorbed the content of spiritual science from the start with complete understanding and was able to pass it on to others. Whenever this was granted her she undertook the task in exemplary fashion. She knew how to endow the ideas she conveyed to others with the kindness and enormous good will of her nature.

Her work continued also when she was separated from us by the frontiers which today so often and so cruelly come between human beings who are close to one another. But no frontiers prevented her from working for our cause also in regions which are now, in Central Europe, considered to be enemy country. She knew tragic experiences, all the horror of this frightful war in which she carried out truly humanitarian work right up to her last illness. She never thought of herself but was always working for others whom the horrors of war had brought into her care. She carried on this Samaritan work in the noblest sense, permeating all she did with the fruits of what she herself had accomplished within our spiritual movement. Although she is closely related to me I venture to speak with deep feeling about this aspect of Olga von Sivers, who, ever since the founding of our movement was a self-sacrificing member. To Marie Steiner and myself it was a beautiful thought that she should be physically with us once more when better times had replaced our bleak present. But here too iron necessity decided otherwise.

This again is a case when death of someone near can clarify and illumine life if we seek to understand it with spiritual insight. Certainly there are things in our society which are open to criticism, often they are things which the society itself brings to light. But we also see all around us other things which are direct results of the strength that flows through our Anthroposophical Movement, things which belong to our most beautiful, loftiest and significant experiences. Today I venture to speak of examples of this kind.

Many of you will also remember someone who, though she did not belong to this branch, I would nevertheless like to remember today because, together with her sisters she often did appear here and will be known to many of you: our Johanna Arnold who not long ago went from the physical plane into the spiritual world. One of her sisters who was equally a loyal and devoted member of our movement died two years ago.

I have in these days been working on a pamphlet to answer the spiteful attacks on our movement by professor Max Dessoir, and I constantly come across statements to the effect that I know nothing of science and that my supporters have to renounce all thoughts of their own.—Well, a personality like Johanna Arnold is a living proof that such statements coming from this ignorant professor are utter lies. Johanna Arnold's deep devotion to spiritual science contributed to the nobility of her life and also to the nobility with which she died. She is indeed a living proof that the most valuable people are among those who recognize and cultivate spiritual science. Her life brought many trials but it was also a life that developed strength of personality and brought out all the greatness of her soul. During the years in our movement she was a vigorous supporter in her branch and neighbouring circles. She did in fact, together with others, a most valuable work throughout the Rhine region. One of the others was Frau Maud Künstler who also died recently. She too was much appreciated and was also intimately connected with our movement.

Not only in her work within our movement did Johanna Arnold give evidence of her strong vigorous character. At the age of seven she, with great courage, saved her older sister from drowning. Part of her life was spent in England. She gave ample proof that not only is life a great teacher but it can also make a soul strong and powerful. Moreover in her case life revealed to her the divine spiritual for which the human soul longs. Through her inner mobility and strength Johanna Arnold became a benefactress to the Anthroposophists whose leader she was. To us who saw the extent of her commitment to our movement she became a dear friend. During these last years since the beginning of this dreadful war—in her attempt to understand what is happening to mankind—Johanna Arnold would ask me significant questions. She was constantly occupied with the thought as to the real meaning of this most difficult trial of the human race and concerned about what each one of us can do in order to go through it in a positive way. None of the daily occurrences of the war escaped her notice. But she was also able to see them in their wider context, bringing them into relation with mankind's spiritual evolution in general. In her attempt to solve the riddle of mankind she made a close study of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Robert Hamerling.

There are indeed many examples in our movement which can show how spiritual science affects man's whole life, his way of working, his inner development. And Johanna Arnold is a living proof, if such is required, that it is a blatant lie to say that individual thought must be renounced in our movement. She was looked up to as an example by those who knew her, not only through her devotion and loyalty to our spiritual-scientific movement but also because she sought through earnest independent thinking, to fathom the secrets of man's existence.—I am personally grateful to all those who so beautifully expressed their appreciation at the funeral of our friend. Her sister who is with us today has witnessed within a short time the death of Johanna Arnold as well as that of another sister; to her we would say that we shall remain united with her in loyal thoughts of those who have gone from her side into the spiritual world. We shall cherish their memory and retain a living connection with them.

These thoughts concerning departed friends, linked as they are with sorrowful experiences, also belong to our studies—using the word here free from all pedantry. We know that for the human soul there is survival and new beginning, but does the same apply to the many hopes and expectations we witness that come to nothing especially in our times? Why is it, we may ask, that even those who have a measure of insight into mankind's evolution nurture unjustified hopes and expectations? The answer is that we must nurture them, for they are forces, effective forces. Any doubt we may have as to whether they will be fulfilled should not prevent us from cherishing them because while we do they act as forces and produce effects whether they are fulfilled or not. We must accept it if, for the time being, they come to nothing. How gladly we set our hopes on many a person when he shows the first signs of warm understanding for the spiritual world. One has such hopes despite the fact that in our materialistic age they are often shattered. In recent lectures I have described deeper reasons as to why such hopes are shattered.

In this connection we must be clear that what we call human courage, which we see today in such abundance in many spheres of external life, is very seldom found in relation to spiritual life. This is why the personalities I spoke of today are really models even in regard to more external aspects of our society and movement. It is dawning on many people today that materialism will not do. But what I have often referred to as man's love of ease prevents them from committing themselves to spiritual science. Yet nothing else can save human civilization from plunging into disaster. There are people who are often quite near the point of crossing the threshold into spiritual science; that they do not is basically due to indolence. It is love of ease that prevents them from making their soul receptive and pliable enough to grasp ideas that quite concretely explain the spiritual world. There are many today who enthuse in general about the mystical unity of worlds, vaguely declaring that science alone does not explain everything; faith must come to its aid. But the courage to penetrate earnestly into the descriptions and explanations of the spiritual world that lies at the foundation of the sense world, that courage is greatly lacking.

Last winter I spoke about Hermann Bahr, about his path of knowledge. His latest books, “Expressionism” and the novel “Ascension,” suggested that he was at the point of becoming conscious of the spiritual world. There is no doubt that despite his vacillations and changes of direction he was at last striving towards the spirit. But his very latest writing which he has just sent me is very curious. Its title is “Reason and Knowledge”^* and it deals with the way modern humanity, in contrast to former times, relies more on reason when seeking spiritual insight, when trying to understand the World Order. Hermann Bahr begins by asking what reason has achieved. In the 18th Century, striving to develop reason was synonymous with so-called enlightenment which also played a decisive role in the 19th Century. He begins by saying that: “Before the war the West imagined that its peoples shared a feeling of community. They were cosmopolitans or else ‘good’ Europeans. There was the glittering world of millionaires, there were the dilettante and the aesthetes and also the international set, the uprooted vagabonds, spending their lives in sleeping cars and in grand hotels by the sea. And there were the proud communities of scientists and artists. Furthermore we had people's rights, we had humanitarianism. Internationally we shared the fruits of industry, commerce, money, thoughts, taste, morals and humour. All the nations in the West had aims and goals in common. They even thought they had also a means in common by which to attain these shared goals: the means of human reason! The hope was that, through united effort and human reason, mankind would attain what was perhaps beyond the reach of single individuals: ultimate truth. We have been robbed of all this by the war; it has all vanished.”

Thus Hermann Bahr, looking at the state of the world, concludes that modern man places a one-sided emphasis on reason. He recalls an interesting episode in Goethe's life. In Bohemia Goethe observed a strangely shaped mountain, the Kammerbühl and he concluded that the mountain must be of volcanic origin. He was convinced it had been formed in an ancient volcanic eruption. But others did not share his view; they presumed the mountain had originated through sedimentation which had been driven upwards by the force of water. Goethe was unable to convince these people that his assumption was the right one. He felt an inner impulse which convinced him that the mountain was of volcanic origin. The others were equally certain it had come about through sedimentation. This argument suggested to Hermann Bahr that impulses, quite different from reason, influence man's judgments; he saw them as impulses at work behind reason. Hermann Bahr concedes that not everyone is a Goethe; nevertheless, it seems to him that while people think they are following reason they are in fact determined by impulses. Earlier, in the Middle Ages, people were exhorted to have faith, to base their thoughts about the world on faith. But faith has become a mere phrase, it has lost its influence except in aspects of life in which science plays no role. Thus to Hermann Bahr man seems to be determined by his impulses. He asks: What kind of impulses are at work in modern man? He goes on to enumerate some impulses and emotions which delude people into believing they are following solely their reason. He says that Americans for example have a particularly strong impulse towards pragmatism. They want what is useful and practical, hence the famous pragmatism of William James.¹⁴ However Hermann Bahr now asks: What has come of this urge toward the useful? He is of the opinion that: “there are two main urges in Western man.” He then points to the much quoted expression that in the Middle Ages science was the handmaid of Theology; looking at modern culture he concludes that reason is certainly not the handmaid to Theology, rather has it become the handmaid of Greed. He then goes into still deeper problems; the individual, he says, cannot exist by himself, he must live in a community. This community is the State in which the individual has his place. This observation inevitably leads Hermann Bahr to ask if, here again, are not emotions the determining factors within the various States? At this point he attempts to link a spiritual element to the individual human soul. This spiritual element he tries to find first in Goethe and Kant; and he finally comes to the following thought: We see inner impulses at work in our lower life, impulses which draw reason along with them. It is therefore not reason which proves to us whether something is true or untrue. We judge things according to our inner impulses, according to what we want them to be. Thus Goethe wanted the Kammerbühl to be of volcanic origin while his opponents wanted it produced by sedimentation. Hermann Bahr came to the conclusion that there must be impulses in man other than those which stem from the lower nature. This thought brings him to the idea of Genius. What is done by a genius is also done out of impulse, but not a lower one. A genius is someone who is influenced by an element of a cosmic nature. However, the word genius almost makes Hermann Bahr split hairs. He consults Grimm's dictionary to get to the bottom of what the word Genius means; he familiarizes himself with what Goethe, Schiller, the Romantics and others, meant by it. He comes to see that the word genius cannot be applied indiscriminately. For example, if it is used to denote the highest impulse in the pursuit of knowledge then all professors would claim to be geniuses and there would be as many of them to venerate as there were professors. Hermann Bahr had no wish for that, so he looks for another way out. He comes to the conclusion that Goethe was quite right in applying the word genius only to a few special individuals. If applicable only to a few then it cannot be considered as an impulse for scientific endeavour. In short Hermann Bahr reaches a point where he senses that the soul of man has a connection with the spiritual world. He says: “You may tear me to pieces but I cannot explain the logical connection between the impact on the human soul of the hymn: ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ (‘Come Holy Ghost’) and the meaning of genius in the Goethean sense. The connection is there and is sublime, powerful and real, yet I cannot explain it.”

However, there is one thing that Herman Bahr does want to explain; namely, that relying merely on reason does not help; reason as such, he says, does not lead man to truth. He rejects what in the age of enlightenment had been seen as the supremacy of reason, had been seen as reason's ability to explain everything observed and investigated. He wants to dethrone reason for in his view it has become subservient to external trade and technology and it simply follows man's impulses.

One thing these inner impulses of man do demonstrate is how a man like Hermann Bahr is able to reach the portal of spiritual science and then, because of lack of initiative to get to grips with spiritual science he holds back. He remains at the point of view that reason on its own is helpless, faith must step in to guide it. Thus the impulses that are to guide man must come, not from his lower nature but from God. He must receive them through faith. Knowledge must be guided by faith, reason alone can attain nothing. Hermann Bahr makes great effort to find confirmation of this idea. For example he makes an interesting reference to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi¹⁵ who in a letter once expressed the perceptive idea that when it comes to the human soul's ability to grasp truth it is as if it were capable of elasticity, of expansion. This is a very ingenious idea of Jacobi's. I expressed the same thing somewhat differently in my Philosophy of Freedom where I spoke of an organism of thought, wherein one thought grows out of the preceding one. Whenever one arrives at the "elasticity" of man's inner nature, thinking continues, through its own power, the line of thought. When this happens one is experiencing the power of the spirit in one's own soul. Both Jacobi and Hermann Bahr point to the fact that something of a spiritual nature lives and acts in the human soul. What is so remarkable about Hermann Bahr is that he attempts to find in man the higher, the divine man, by demonstrating that reason is subservient to faith. In so doing he denies validity to the very impulse, i.e., reason that governs modern scientific endeavour.

One impulse Hermann Bahr does not discover: the Christ impulse which lives, or at least can live, in modern man. He points to Christ in only one place—two other places where he mentions Christ have no significance—and what he says there does not come from him but is a quotation from Pascal.¹⁶ It comes from Cascali “Pensus” when he says that “we human beings only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; that we know life and death only through Jesus Christ; through ourselves alone we know nothing either of our life or our death; nothing of either God or ourselves.”—Here Pascal is pointing to an impulse that comes from within man yet does not stem from himself; i.e. the Christ impulse. To understand it a sense of history is needed, for it has only been on earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus Hermann Bahr gets no further than Harnack and others. He comes as far as the idea of a universal God who speaks through nature, but not to a living understanding of Christ. This, once more, is an example of someone who is striving for truth yet cannot find the Christ and is unaware that he does not find Him. Hermann Bahr is at pains to show that throughout the evolution of the world man's striving is in evidence. He says beautiful things about Greek and Roman culture and even about Mohammed. The only thing he leaves out is the Mystery of Golgotha. He speaks of Christianity only in a reference to St. Augustine. But no amount of preoccupation with reason and the like can lead to Christ; it can lead only to a universal God. Christ, the God who descended from cosmic heights into earthly life, lives in us as truly as our own highest being lives in us. As Pascal indicated, we can attain knowledge of life and death; of God and ourselves only through being permeated by Christ. This truth can be recognized and understood only through spiritual science.

Goethe did pave the way to spiritual science. But when Hermann Bahr—in order to justify why he finally turned to faith—tries to explain the value of all kinds of statements by Goethe, all he says is: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teaching of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” Here we see the influence of an external power which at present clearly indicates its intention to increase that power. Yet people remain deaf and blind to the signs of the times; they let what can explain the signs of the times pass them by. Hermann Bahr in his own way is well able to read these signs. He knows of the many things that induce modern man to say things like: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teachings of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” It is a supreme example of how indolence can make a man come to a standstill in his endeavour. I love Hermann Bahr and have no wish to say anything against him. I only want to indicate what in such a characteristic way can influence a talented and significant personality of our time.

It is easy enough to blame reason, much can be said against it. It can be accused of not leading man to truth. However, blaming reason simply shows that the matter has not been thought through. Sufficient exploration will reveal that it is only when reason is permeated by Ahriman that it leads away from truth. Similarly if faith is permeated by Lucifer it also leads away from truth. Faith is in danger of being saturated with Lucifer, reason with Ahriman. But neither faith nor reason as such lead to untruth or error. In the religious sense they are gifts of God to man. When they follow their rightful path they will lead to truth, never to either error or untruth. Deeper insight reveals how Ahriman comes to insinuate himself into reason and bring about confusion. This knowledge can be obtained however, only by penetrating into the actual spiritual world. To do this requires one to make the effort to grasp the ideas, the descriptions which depict the spiritual world. If man persists in living in arid abstractions he sins against reason and remains ignorant of the fact that through the development of reason in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch man's ‘I’ is to enter the consciousness soul. People talk about man's relation to the spirit like the blind talk about colors. However, no matter how much the ignorant accuse one of contradictions—when speaking from the point of view of spiritual science—it is essential, as already explained, to stand by the results obtained when the spirit is investigated by spiritual means. One has a personal responsibility for the spirit.

This is the kind of responsibility I was able to speak about earlier in connection with special personalities whose example illustrates man's greatness when he feels responsible, not only for his actions, but also for his thoughts and feelings. By contrast you here have someone with no feeling of responsibility; without trying to discover what the present needs, he links onto influences in man's evolution which belong in the past. Consequently Hermann Bahr can say: “If anyone is interested in the path that led me to God, he may refer to my publication ‘Taking Stock’ and ‘Expressionism’ but I must ask the reader not to generalize my personal experiences; they have helped me but may not necessarily help others” and “Should the reader come upon any passage which deviates from the fundamental issue I must ask him to balance it against my good intentions. Any unfortunate ambiguous phrase caused by negligence is against my will and to my regret.” In other words if one simply accepts whatever decree that goes out from the Vatican there is no need to be personally responsible for one's actions.

It may be a good thing when someone openly and sincerely makes such a confession. However what it implies could not be further from the attitude of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. What Hermann Bahr is confessing actually expresses a fundamental condition demanded by that spiritual stream which is again trying to assert itself. A condition one could sum up by saying: “The authority of the Vatican decrees what the world in general should believe and profess. And I concede from the start that what as a single individual I hold dear, my belief, my view of things are not the concern of the world in general. I may add my voice but only to the extent it finds approval with the Vatican.”

I do not know to what extent it is still fashionable to make confessions of this kind. What I do know is that spiritual science must rest on its own independent research and take full responsibility for that research. It must also accept disillusions and shattered hopes no matter how often they occur, also when they are, as in the case of Hermann Bahr, completely unexpected.

• *. The first World War
• *. “Vernunft and Wissenschaft”
• 14. William James 1842–1910 American Philosopher, founder of Pragmatism
• 15. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi 1743–1819 Philosopher and Novelist.
• 16. Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 French Natural Philosopher

How can one approach the Christ impulse, how does one come near the Being of Christ? In one form or another this question is asked again and again—and rightly so. People feel a need to ask this all-important question which must be approached from many aspects as we have done in our anthroposophical studies. Just as a photograph of a tree taken from one angle does not convey its full shape, so one aspect or indeed several do not exhaust the many-sidedness of a spiritual reality. All we can hope is that we shall come near it by approaching it from as many aspects as possible.

It is essential to realize that seeking Christ is deeply connected with the nature of the human ‘I’ and is therefore something inward and intimate. The special nature of the human ‘I’ comes to expression in the way we use the word ‘I.’ All other words are applicable to other things whereas the word ‘I’ can never refer to anything except to the one who speaks it. Because of the inner relationship between the Being of Christ and the human ‘I’ the Christ Being has for us the same intimate character as our own ‘I.’ All the impulses of feeling and will which stir within us when we contemplate the Mystery of Christ are actual means by which we draw near the Christ. It is through feeling- and will-filled contemplation of Christ that we have reason to hope we may find Him. At present it is of particular importance to pay attention to mankind's historical evolution especially in relation to the Event of Christ. Historically, the present is a significant moment in time. Few are aware of its full implication; it is therefore all the more important to be mindful of man's historical development in relation to every issue of significance.

We know that man's inner development, the whole configuration of his soul life was different before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. Various aspects of this difference have already been described. Some fifty or sixty years ago there was more feeling for spiritual knowledge, more people concerned themselves with higher questions. The inclination to do so has since waned. To illustrate this we can turn to the writings of a psychologist such as Fortlage¹⁷ who, up to the sixties of the 19th Century practiced in Jena and other cities. We still find in his writings a remarkable description of human consciousness to which, I may add, modern philosophers take great exception.

Fortlage said, in (1869), that human consciousness is related to death, to dying, and as we, in the course of life, develop consciousness we are actually slowly and gradually developing those forces which, at the moment of death, confront us all of a sudden. In other words Fortlage sees the moment of death as an immensely enhanced act of consciousness. One could say that he sees consciousness as life which gradually develops into death. It is not life as such which develops death, but the consciousness in man develops death forces and death itself is enhanced consciousness compressed into a moment. This statement by a psychologist—condemned as I said by modern philosophers as unscientific—is immensely significant.

It is important to realize that despite the significance of this statement in relation to man's present soul life, that is his present consciousness, it is not true for every period of man's evolution. If we go back thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha no one with deeper insight would have spoken like that. Our present consciousness, which is normally devoid of all former atavistic clairvoyance, does owe its existence to slow death. But this was not the case at the time of the ancient atavistic clairvoyant consciousness which disappeared as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha approached. Words are always inadequate for describing such matters. Nevertheless it can be said that this ancient consciousness was engendered by a surplus of spiritual life over man's organic life. Now we find ourselves within a surplus of organic life which is gradually dying. Our consciousness at present is due to the fact that, in returning to the body upon waking, we are overwhelmed by a body which is subject to death, which is progressively dying. The fact that we are overwhelmed by it enables us to develop our present day-consciousness which is an object consciousness.

In ancient times before the Mystery of Golgotha things were different. Man then had a surplus of spiritual life which was not altogether extinguished when, on waking, he returned to the body. This surplus of spiritual life expressed itself as atavistic clairvoyance. But as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha approached this surplus decreased ever more. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, in the case of most people, a balance had been reached between man's inner life of soul and the organic life of his body. After the Mystery of Golgotha the organic life gradually gained the upper hand. One can also express it by saying that before the Mystery of Golgotha man gained knowledge through the forces of birth; after the Mystery of Golgotha he gains knowledge through the forces of death. This again illustrates the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha as the turning point in human evolution.

The ancient clairvoyant consciousness; i.e., the consciousness related to birth began to wane. Slowly and gradually man lost the spiritual world from his consciousness. Whereas formerly everyone was able to experience the spiritual world a time began, about a thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, when gradually only those who were initiated in the Mysteries were able to do so. This explains a remark made by Plato, referred to in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact. Plato who knew of this secret, declared that only those initiated in the Mysteries were humans in the true sense, all others were souls submerged in mire.—Rather a horrible statement but not an arbitrary one: it refers to the situation I have just described which arose out of necessity in human evolution.

Let us for a moment imagine what would have happened had the Mystery of Golgotha not taken place: Evolution would have continued the way it was before, which means that more and more human beings on the earth would lose all direct connection with the spiritual world. Eventually humanity would no longer be able to incorporate the spirit; man's body would become larva-like consisting only of organic and etheric members. A long time ago men's souls would have been incapable of living in the bodies available; they would have hovered above them in the spiritual world. Only those souls who, in an earlier epoch had reached higher development, would be able to inspire their bodies from above. Consciousness of the spiritual world would have been possible only in the case of individuals receiving inspiration in the Mysteries. The human spirit itself would not inhabit the earth. In the mystery centers it would be possible to receive inspiration but Ahriman would battle against this. He would distort the inspirations thus preventing the larva-like human bodies from carrying out what was intended.

Because the human body, during its life between birth and death, overcomes a now comparatively weaker life of soul, it had to be made possible for the human soul to live again in a body which is subject to birth and death. This became possible only because a Being from the spiritual world, the Christ Being, united Himself with those earthly forces which came to dominate man's consciousness. What kind of forces are they? They are death forces, the very forces to which man now owes his consciousness! You will understand the far-reaching meaning of the Rosicrucian saying: In Christo Morimur, in Christ we die. These words express in a sense the very meaning of man's existence. They express what entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. They express what united itself with the death-bringing forces enabling them to become henceforth the basis for man's consciousness.

It may be asked why in these circumstances such a great number of people still do not acknowledge the Christ? All one can say about this is that so many and so far-reaching secrets are connected with this question that at present it is not yet possible to speak about them in a general way. But what I have just described is a fact of human evolution.

Let us now connect what has been said with the Mystery of Golgotha: Christ had incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth; i.e., in a body subject to the same conditions as those to which human bodies in general were subject at that time. As a result of the pure hereditary conditions the body of Jesus of Nazareth was subject to conditions in which consciousness was gradually to emerge from the forces of death. What had to happen to give evolution so mighty a jolt that it would cause an equally mighty impulse to stream as a force into mankind's evolution, making consciousness arise from forces of death? The Christ-being, that lived for three years in and through the body of Jesus of Nazareth, spoke the secrets connected with human consciousness to this body. This could be done only at the moment of death, for it is only then that the entire secret connected with human consciousness is drawn together. Did not the Christ have to lead Jesus through death in order that this whole impulse of consciousness could stream into mankind? Indeed, it did! And death is also that moment when we too may hope to attain an intensified comprehension of Christ. This is because at that moment all the forces are present which have sustained our consciousness throughout life. We are adapted at the moment of death to absorb what is in fact the secret of our consciousness and to absorb with it the Christ Impulse. We are preparing ourselves to receive it when we seek not only to understand but to experience the reality of the Christ Impulse. However what meets us at death we can understand only when our organ for understanding is set free. That means that while the moment of death does indeed provide the condition for union with Christ, it is only when we are free of the etheric body that the astral body and ‘I’—the organization for understanding—can actually perceive this union.

Something else had to take place at the Mystery of Golgotha to bring about these conditions: After Christ had—in dying on Golgotha—entrusted to Jesus as it were the secrets of man's future consciousness, a momentous event had to occur: Jesus, in whom the Christ dwelt, rose to new life through the force of death. In other words, the Resurrection had to occur in order that we could understand that Resurrection when, a few days after death, we experience our ether body separating from us as explained by anthroposophical science. In this more inward death—i.e., the separation from the ether body a few days after death—we relive in a certain sense the Mystery of Golgotha. For it was life, that is, consciousness, which rose out of death: a living consciousness. At no time before the Mystery of Golgotha had this ever happened; life had always risen from life. Never before had there been a necessity to understand how life can come from death, only how life comes from life.—This is one of many approaches to the Mystery of Golgotha.

The fundamental issue of Christianity is the Resurrection. Anything calling itself by that name without having as its center a living concept of the Resurrection is no true Christianity. It is absolutely essential to understand that Christ, who united Himself with the forces of death, is the living Christ. Nothing else provides a true understanding of Christianity. Modern so-called Christianity which avoids the concept of the Resurrection is not Christianity. The essential need in mankind's evolution was the Death and Resurrection. The other events which took place at the Mystery of Golgotha are all an integral part of what has just been described.

One thought which is always problematic concerns the circumstances which led to the death of Christ Jesus.—I have often touched on this problem—on the one hand there is the feeling that the people must be condemned who brought death upon someone without sin, on the other there is the fact that if this death had not occurred Christianity would not exist. This means that Christianity with all its values has come into existence through a misdeed. The contradictory thought constantly forces itself upon man: If there had been no one criminal enough to put Christ to death there would be no Christianity. Yet we need Christianity!

Here we are touching on one of those issues in relation to which appeal must be made to understand what I recently termed “iron necessity.” During his earthly life man's thinking is adapted to the way he looks at things and he arranges life accordingly. All civic, political and other arrangements are based on human views. We live as a matter of course in conditions created by human beings, unconcerned as to whether the thoughts on which these arrangements are based come from God or from the devil. Whereas if we look back to conditions, as they generally were a long time before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that in those ancient times man's thoughts, concerned with social arrangements, were received through atavistic clairvoyance. As we have seen, when the time of the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, man's body became more and more larva-like and as a consequence more and more accessible to ahrimanic influences. Therefore social and political institutions become more and more saturated with ahrimanic forces. It was inevitable for instance that the code of law should eventually become as it is now. It was also inevitable that an ahrimanic code of law should be particularly in evidence and concentrated, so to speak, at one particular spot on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Such circumstances did not prevail everywhere, but in one place the social structure was completely ahrimanic. Therefore the appearance of its very antithesis, the appearance of a God was for this society the most hateful thing that could happen, it had to be eliminated. This phenomenon, of necessity, accompanies all the others connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.

Two things in particular brought about this social structure. First, the kind of thoughts that had evolved out of Judaic law, were so saturated with ahrimanic forces that by means of them there was no possibility of grasping the fact that a God could come so close to man as was the case of Christ Jesus. This was something Judaic law had of necessity to reject. Secondly, the Romans were also responsible for the death of Christ Jesus; they were a powerful and efficient force in establishing the external side of the social structure. One cannot imagine a more powerful example than the social structure created by Roman Imperialism, particularly at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet at the moment the Mystery of Golgotha is enacted, Pilate, the representative of the strongest earthly power, proves a weakling when faced with spiritual power. He is incapable of coming to any insight or to make any decision about what is to happen.

So you see this is also a phenomenon connected with the Mystery of Golgotha—I have mentioned it before—that it took place at a time when mankind was least able to understand. In ancient times it would have been understood, but when it actually happened it was not. It must be realized that to understand this event a different approach is necessary.

One comes to realize that one must bring to the Mystery of Golgotha all the depths of one's thoughts and feelings; for example when one attempts to relate the Mystery of Golgotha to the secrets of human death and man's subsequent awakening in the astral body and ‘I.’ It is through thoughts, through contemplation that one draws near to this Mystery. It is of no use to express through empty words a general wish to reach union with Christ; what is needed is a concrete understanding of what the actual appearance of Christ in earth evolution means for one's own life. It is not without meaning that the same time span elapsed between the death and the resurrection of Christ Jesus as the one that elapses between our leaving the physical body and our leaving the ether body in death. There is an intimate bond between Christ's life on earth and the man of today living after the Mystery of Golgotha. It is now possible to say with greatest conviction: Christ came in order that man should not be lost to the earth. Had the Mystery of Golgotha not taken place man's body would have become larva-like, directed from above by his soul. Death would gradually have removed man from the earth altogether. Through the Mystery of Golgotha man's connection with the earth was restored. Through the Mystery of Golgotha the possibility of consciousness arising from death was created.

These things can be understood today, they are revealed to contemplation of the spiritual world; making them our own deepens our inner life. When we are faced with crucial events we are not helped by knowing in a general way that we are connected with something called “the Christ,” whereas our inner life is deepened and strengthened when we know quite concretely that we are intimately connected with that Being who actually experienced earthly life and went through the Mystery of Golgotha. In contemplating these things we feel our innermost being intimately connected with the historical events of Golgotha.

At the present time man is going through a crisis as far as understanding the Mystery of Golgotha is concerned. Last week I attempted to illustrate this crisis by means of a specific example. I wanted to show how a human being may make a thorough study of Christianity yet fail to find Christ. At present it is possible to belong to established Christian communities, perhaps to one which at present has an ever-increasing influence, without approaching Christ. This is a phenomenon which spiritual science must emphasize again and again. What must also be emphasized is that it is modern man's task to call up the inner forces of his soul which enables him to grasp spiritual-scientific thoughts. A certain power of soul must be called upon in order to make these thoughts inwardly living. Unless we do we shall make no progress, for it lies in the nature of present-day man that he should call upon this soul-force. A force which ought to be used, but is not, produces sickness in some form. Illness is caused not only through lack of something but also through overabundance of something. Numerous people who appear weak are in reality strong. Paradoxical as it may seem they are strong inwardly. Many who go about like weaklings dissatisfied with life, not knowing how to be—as they put it—“in tune with the infinite” are actually strong, but subconsciously. However, they are incapable of bringing their subconscious strength into consciousness because they have no inkling of what it is that clamours for recognition within them. As a consequence the subconscious rebels and causes instability. The aim of spiritual science is to make man conscious of what is stirring within him, of what is in fact striving to become conscious. A true and satisfying understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha is what above all wants to become conscious, a fact which often expresses itself in remarkable ways.

As I have pointed out there is on the one hand a need to understand the spiritual world and on the other a shrinking away from such knowledge. Many things show that the longing is there to find again the spirit, which however, cannot be found today without an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. That the longing is present is often emphasized by writers who are themselves as remote as possible from any real comprehension. In order to understand present-day life we must acquaint ourselves with these matters of which there are plenty of examples in everyday life. Those who have developed interest in spiritual science have the task to recognize the spiritual knowledge which should be impartial at present; they must also be able to recognize where there is a shrinking away from such knowledge. One must especially learn to recognize where there seemingly is a striving for the spirit—which indeed there is, though unconsciously—but in a spurious form while genuine spiritual science is not approached. That is why I do not hesitate to point to such obvious examples in present-day life.

Recently I was sent another article in which the writer describes just such an example of so-called spiritual striving. Someone the writer knew well told him—the way such things are usually conveyed these days—that he simply must hear Johannes Müller¹⁸ speak. This gentleman felt that to hear Johannes Müller was an experience not to be missed. He further informed the writer that Johannes Muller is the principal of a psychiatric clinic and had founded what amounted to a new ethics, a new religion. However, at the word religion he suddenly plunged into a detailed Christology. At an incredible speed he developed his personal view of the life of Jesus after which he elaborated on liberal theology, the Warburg school of thought, and that of the Heidelburg school. He then went on to discuss Alexandrine poetry and Hegelianism and so on.—This is a prime example of the folly of many people who take an interest in whatever crops up and at the slightest opportunity reel it off at breakneck speed. The writer, listening to all this, thought no one could speak that fast except perhaps >Kainz¹⁹ and then only if he had to catch the last express train to Berlin after a theater performance. Nevertheless after this experience the writer goes to hear a lecture by Johannes Müller about the purpose of life.

Listening to this lecture the writer felt that Johannes Müller spoke about life's purpose as would a saint. The lecture dealt with how one ought to sacrifice oneself, how one should live for others, not for oneself and so on. Only one thing bothered the writer: the conversation he had with the fast-talking gentleman had led him to form a picture in his mind of Johannes Müller. He felt that if only Johannes Müller had looked like this mental picture he could have believed in him. However, Johannes Müller was nothing like what he had visualized. He describes his impression of Johannes Müller which I shall not spare you as it demonstrates how one sets about judging things nowadays. This is the writer's description: “On to the platform came a medium-sized, thick-set man with a short neck, bushy moustache, fresh complexion; the archetype of a thoroughly healthy citizen of a German provincial town. I could not avoid the idea that this man would be perfect as manager of some large toy factory in Nuremberg. The way he dealt with the audience reinforced this impression. His way of speaking was lucid, definite, friendly, calm, yet expressing strong inner participation in what he said. Everything was explained in simple terms with many repetitions and he never stopped till he had said all he wanted to say. He kept to his subject, spoke to the point and was obviously filled with earnest desire to serve the good. In short, ideally a town council should be composed of people like him. Similar things could be said about his subject; basically, Johannes Müller expressed what good German citizens would think about on special feast days.”

How does this impression compare with the writer's image of someone who spoke about self-sacrifice and living solely for others? He says: “The image I had formed of Johannes Müller had established itself so firmly in my mind that I was convinced he must be real. I had visualized someone with a pale face which he would support with a thin white hand, his sad brown eyes gazing into far distances. If this Johannes Müller had been on the platform saying in a soft voice: Believe me Ladies and Gentlemen, the purpose of life is sacrifice, then not only I, but everyone, would, at least for the moment, have had to agree.”

In other words if Johannes Müller had resembled the writer's preconceived notion the latter would have believed him. Very interesting! And why would the writer believe him? The reason is simple. This writer, unlike most people in the audience, has a critical mind. He judges with a certain shrewdness that a speaker with a pale face, liquid eyes and a melting look would have a right to speak about sacrifice. One would believe in him, for it would be clear that for such a man self-sacrifice would be the joy of his life; therefore no real sacrifice. The external appearance of Johannes Müller obviously suggested none of this. The writer said to himself: the way this man on the platform expresses himself, the way he looks makes it obvious that what he says has nothing to do with sacrifice on his part. He speaks as he does because he enjoys it, to him it is a joke.—This is of course a paradox; what the writer felt was that a man like the speaker would always do just what he wanted to do, what would give him pleasure. He would never say so, for if he did he would have to tell his audience that the purpose of life is to follow whatever impulse one happens to have, to do whatever one has an urge to do. In fact he would have to speak like Nietzsche. He does not for he would always say what is opposite to his actual inclinations.

Nowadays there is often a longing to say things which are opposite one's inclinations. Let us be quite clear about what this implies. There is no doubt that just those who are least inclined to sacrifice themselves for others are the very people who love to say that the purpose of life is self-sacrifice, to live solely for others. There is a definite wish to say what is in absolute contrast to reality.—What is that?

When life is observed with a sense for reality it is very recognizable that what people like to speak about are impulses in complete contrast to their own. They deceive themselves about it of course, but it is a most conspicuous feature of life today. There is a desire for the sensation of something which is in contrast to the reality. It must be remembered that there is at present no great understanding for these matters. There is also the fact that so many possibilities exist which help to avoid coming face to face with them. For instance someone hearing Johannes Müller say that the purpose of life is to sacrifice oneself for others might tell a lot of people how he has heard a marvelous speaker say something very illuminating: “The purpose of life is to sacrifice oneself for others” and announce that henceforth he will live by that principle according to the way he sees it. Living by such a rule the way one sees it is of course an easy way to avoid many of the more difficult demands made by life. At present it is a favorite way of doing just that; and confirms that for many people, indeed for most it is exciting to say the very opposite of what they are.

It is basically an expression of a longing many people have; they are dissatisfied with external life and want something different. There is a genuine longing to rise above external life but the longing finds unhealthy expression because people seek at all cost to avoid recognizing the reality of the spirit. Take the example of the writer I just mentioned; he will undoubtedly be suited better by Johannes Muller than by spiritual science—that is predictable. The reason is simple; Johannes Müller speaks of things like the purpose of life, of sacrificing oneself for others. This subject the writer can use for an article which he ends with the words: “What the great universal purpose of life is we shall never know, nor is it in the last resort necessary for us to know.”—Thus the writer manages to appear high-minded and worldly while remaining a thoroughly ordinary philistine.

This is impossible when one strives to attain a world view which does not rely on mere phrases but recognizes the reality of the spiritual world and what is demanded of the present age. The individual who sets out on this path will develop a sense for what the spiritual world at this moment wants from him. He will discover for himself how his development ought to progress and to what extent his particular destiny requires him to sacrifice himself for others. There is no need for any phrase to be bandied about; what is needed is the development of that inner strength which eventually leads to spiritual insight.

Nothing can be said against the meaning of a sentence such as: “The purpose of life is to sacrifice oneself for others,” but it remains a sterile phrase till one learns to bring spiritual reality into physical reality. That was the very reason why the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled. It entered evolution so that new life might spring from death. Or in other words, so that the living spirit might be born from our present death-related consciousness. In bringing to birth, within our death-related consciousness, the living spirit, we approach the Mystery of Golgotha.—There are indications which suggest that people are beginning to recognize the necessity of listening to what spiritual science has to say. We live in difficult times, fraught with problems and conflict. Everyone feels that it is essential to find a way out. However, it is inherent in the age that a way out can be found only through a real understanding of the spirit. All other attempts will prove illusory.

The first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha came about through direct experience. At first people could speak of Christ because some had actually seen Him; later some had known others who had seen Him. There was still an echo of Christ's own words in those spoken by the first Apostles. Thus mankind's first experience of Christ was on the physical plane. Through the centuries this knowledge faded and had vanished altogether by the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. That the present situation should arise was therefore inevitable when there are people—as I described in the last lecture—who, though they want to be Christians, do not actually seek Christ. We must realize that we live in a time of crisis as far as understanding Christ is concerned. We can reach understanding appropriate to our age in no other way than through an ever-deeper understanding of spiritual science. Ahrimanic forces battle against this knowledge just because it is so essential in our time. However, this does not prevent those who recognize the task of spiritual science from seeing this task connected with the enormous world-historical events taking place in our time. The solution to today's great problems can only come from real knowledge of the present age. And it is not biased propaganda to say that only through spiritual science can a solution be found.

• 17. Arnold Rudolf Karl Fortlage 1806–1881 German Philosopher
• 18. Johannes Müller 1864–1949 German Philosopher
• 19. Josef Kainz 1858–1910 famous actor.

It is especially important in our time that the reality of spiritual life is not confused with the way people interpret this reality. We live in an age when human understanding and human conduct are strongly influenced by materialism. However, it would be wrong to think that because our age is materialistic, spiritual influences are not at hand, that the spirit is not present and active. Strange as it may seem it is possible, particularly in our time, to observe an abundance of effects in human life which are purely spiritual. They are everywhere in evidence and, the way they manifest, one could certainly not say that they are either invisible or inactive. The situation is rather that people, because of their materialistic outlook, are incapable of seeing what is manifestly there. All they see is what is so to speak "on the agenda." When one looks at people's attitude to the spirit, at the way they react when spiritual matters are spoken of, it reminds one of an incident which took place several decades ago in a Central European city. There was an important meeting of an important body of people and the degeneration of moral standards came under discussion. Immoral practices had begun to have adverse influence on certain financial transactions. Naturally a large part of this distinguished body of people wanted financial matters to be discussed purely from the point of view of finance. But a minority—it usually is a minority on such occasions—wanted to discuss the issue of moral corruption. However a minister got up and simply tossed aside such an irrelevant issue by saying: “But gentlemen, morality is not on the agenda.”—It could be said that the attitude of a great many people today in regard to spiritual matters is also one that says: But gentlemen, the spirit is not on the agenda. It is manifestly not on the agenda when things of importance are debated. But perhaps such debates do not always deal with the reality, perhaps the spirit is present, only it is not put on the agenda when human affairs are under discussion.

When one considers these things, and has opportunity to talk more intimately with people, a situation emerges which is very different from what is imagined by those who feel embarrassed by talking about things of a spiritual nature. When one comes to discuss how people got the impulse to do what they are doing one finds again and again that they decided on a project because of some prophetic vision or because of some inner impulse. As I said, if one looks at these things and is able to assess the situation, more often than not things are done because of some spiritual influence, perhaps in the form of a dream or some other kind of vision. Much more than is imagined takes place under the influence of spiritual powers and impulses which flow into the physical world from the spiritual world. People's theoretical rejection of spirituality, based on present-day outlook, does not alter the fact that significant spiritual impulses do penetrate everywhere into our world. However, they do not escape being influenced by the prevailing materialism. There has always been an influx of spiritual impulses throughout mankind's evolution and one ought not to think that this has ceased in our time. But people responded differently when there was more awareness of the existence of a spiritual world than they do in a materialistic age like ours. Let us look at a particular example.

It is extraordinarily difficult to convey to the world certain facts concerning spiritual matters, the reason being that people in general are not sufficiently prepared; they cannot formulate the appropriate concepts for receiving rightly such communications from the spiritual world. Such communications are all too easily distorted into the very opposite. Therefore it often happens, especially at present, that those who are initiated into spiritual matters must remain silent in regard to what is most essential. They must because it cannot be foreseen what might happen if certain things were imparted to someone unripe for the information. Nevertheless certain situations do often arise. On occasions, in accordance with higher laws, discussions take place about spiritual matters. When it is difficult, as it usually is at present, to discuss such things with the living it can often be all the more fruitful to discuss them with those who have died. Seldom perhaps was there a time when conscious interaction between the physical plane and the spiritual world, in which the dead are living, was so vigorous as it can be at present.

Let us assume that a discussion takes place of a kind possible only between someone with knowledge on the physical plane and someone who has died. In this situation something very curious can happen, something that could be termed a "transcendental indiscretion" can take place. The fact is that there are those who listen at keyholes, so to speak, not only on the physical plane, but also among certain beings in the spiritual world. There are spirits of an inferior kind who are forever attempting to obtain knowledge of all kinds of spiritual facts by such means. They listen to what is being said between beings on the physical plane and those in the spiritual world. Their opportunity to listen to such a conversation can arise through someone who, being especially passionate, in the grip of his passion is, as one might say, “beside himself.” This kind of situation often arises through passion, through being drunk—really physically drunk—or through faintness. It gives the lower spirit opportunity to enter into the person with the result that the person either then or later has visions of some kind and can hear things he is not supposed to hear.

It is well known to those able to observe such happenings that countless things, obtained through indiscretion in spiritual communication, appear in distorted form in all kinds of literature, particularly those of a more dubious kind. Nothing is more effective than when some lower elemental spirit (Kobold) takes possession of the writer of a detective novel, especially if drunk and, entering into his human frailties, instills in him a particular sentence or phrase which he then introduces into his story. Later the novel reaches people through all kinds of direct or indirect channels; the particular sentence has an especially strong effect because, given the way people take these things in, it speaks, not to the reader's consciousness, but to his subconscious.

Another method which is very effective is when, in a spiritualistic seance, such a spirit may have the opportunity to insinuate, into what is related through the medium, the spiritual indiscretion he wishes put to effect. This is not to say anything against mediumship as such, only the way it is used. Many things occur in the course of human karma which, in order to come to light, need mediumistic communications. We are not dealing with this aspect today, however. The point I want to make at the moment is to emphasize that there are at the present time spiritual channels between the spiritual world and the physical plane. These channels are very numerous and far more effective than is supposed.—Having said this you will understand better when I now say something which may seem paradoxical but is nevertheless a reality.

The years between 1914 and 1917 will no doubt be written about in the future in the usual way of historians. They will scrutinize documents, found in archives everywhere, in order to establish what caused the terrible World War. On this basis they will attempt to write a plausible account of say the year 1914 in relation to events in Europe. However, one thing is certain: no documentary research, no report drawn up in the way this is usually done will suffice to explain the causes of this monstrous event. The reason is simply that according to their very nature the most significant causes are not inscribed by pen or printer's ink into external documents. Furthermore their very existence is denied because they are not, so to speak, “on the agenda.”

Just in these last days you will have read reports of the legal inquiries going on in Russia. The Russian minister of war Suchomlinoff,²⁰ the Chief of the Russian General Staff and other personalities have made important statements which have caused a great deal of indignation. Many feel moral indignation on learning that Suchomlinoff lied to the Czar; or that the Chief of the Russian General Staff, with the mobilization order in his pocket, gave the German Military Attache his solemn promise that this order had not yet been issued. He said this because he intended to pass it on to the proper quarters a few minutes later. Such things are certainly cause for indignation and moralizing but so much lying goes on nowadays that no one should be surprised that really fat ones are told in important places. But these incidents and what people say about them are truly not the real issue. That is something quite different. When one reads the full report carefully one comes across remarkable words which are clear indicators of what really took place. Suchomlinoff himself says that while these events were taking place he, for a time, lost his reason. He says in so many words: “I lost my reason over it.” The continuous vacillation of events caused this state of affairs. He was not alone, quite a few others in key positions were in similar states.

Imagine a person occupying a position such as that of Suchomlinoff: The loss of his power of reasoning gives splendid opportunity for ahrimanic beings to take possession of him and instill into his soul all kinds of suggestions. Ahriman uses such methods to bring his influence to bear, especially when no importance is attached to remaining fully conscious—apart from sleep. When we are fully conscious such spiritual beings have no real access to our soul. But when our spirit; i.e., our consciousness is suppressed then ahrimanic beings have immediate access. Dimmed consciousness is for ahrimanic and luciferic beings the window or door through which they can enter the world and carry out their intention. They attack people when they are in a state of dimmed consciousness and take possession of them. Ahriman and Lucifer do not act in inexplicable terrifying ways but through human beings whose state of consciousness gives them access.

Those who in the future want to write a history of this war must discover where such dimmed states of consciousness occurred, where doors and windows were thrown open for the entry of ahrimanic and luciferic powers. In earlier times such things did not happen to the same extent in events of a similar kind. In order to describe the causes of events during earlier times what professors and historians find in archives will suffice, whereas in the case of present events something will remain unexplained over and above what is found in documents however well researched. This something is the penetration of certain spiritual powers into the human world through states of dimmed consciousness.

I spoke in an earlier lecture about how, in a certain region of the earth, conditions were prepared for decades so that at the right moment the appropriate ahrimanic forces could penetrate and influence mankind. Something of this nature took place in July and August of 1914 when an enormous flood, a veritable whirlpool, of spiritual impulses surged through Europe. That has to be rightly understood and taken into account. One simply does not understand reality if one is not prepared to approach it with concrete concepts derived from spiritual insight. To understand what is real, as opposed to what is unreal, at the present time spiritual science is an absolute necessity. Nothing can effectively be done in the political or any other sphere unless wide-awake consciousness is developed concerning events which must be approached with concepts and ideas gained from spiritual knowledge. Not that everything can be judged in stereotyped fashion according to spiritual science. But spiritual knowledge can stir us to alert participation in present issues, whereas a materialistic view of events allows us to sleep through things of greatest importance. A materialistic outlook prevents us from arriving at proper judgement of what the present asks of us.

A recognition of what here is at stake is what I so much want to be present as an undercurrent in our spiritual-scientific lectures and discussions, so that spiritual knowledge may become a vital force enabling souls to deal appropriately with outer life. It is essential to recognize not only the issues of spiritual science itself but also those of external life as they truly are. One must be able to arrive at judgements based on the symptoms to be seen everywhere.

I recently described the incredible superficiality with which a professor of Berlin University attacked Anthroposophy. I told you of the misrepresentations and slanders delivered by Max Dessoir.²¹ That such an individual should be a member of a learned body is part and parcel of the complexities of life today. Max Dessoir once wrote a history of psychology and mentions in the preface that he wrote it because the Berlin Academy of Science had offered a prize for a work on the subject. The history of psychology written by Max Dessoir is such a slovenly piece of work, containing fundamental errors that he withdrew it and prohibited further publication. Consequently not many copies are in circulation, though I have a reviewers copy and could say many things about it. For the moment I refer to it in my forth coming booklet concerned with attacks on Anthroposophy.

As I said Max Dessoir wrote a history of psychology and then withdrew it from circulation. But the fact remains that the Berlin Academy of Science did award it the prize. Such things should not be overlooked; they are symptomatic of what takes place nowadays. One must ask: who are the people who award such prizes? They are the very people who educate the younger generation; i.e., they educate those who will become leading figures in society. They also educated the generation which brought about the present situation in the world. It is necessary to see things in their true context and to recognize that all the symptoms reveal the need for that which alone can make our time comprehensible.

This again indicates what I wish so very much could flow as an undercurrent through our movement so that spiritual science would shake souls awake and make them alert observers of what really takes place in their surroundings. The occasion for sleep is in our time considerable and naturally ahrimanic and luciferic powers make use of every opportunity to divert the alert consciousness aroused by spiritual knowledge away from the real issues. The opportunities for dulling man's consciousness are plentiful. Someone who studies exclusively a special subject will certainly become ever more knowledgeable and clever in his particular field; yet the clarity of his consciousness may suffer as a result.—In speaking about these things one is skating on very thin ice.

While it is true that there are many things of which an initiate cannot speak at present because it could have terrible results, it is also true that there are things of which one can and indeed must speak. To give an example, there is a professor at a German university of whom much good could be said and I have no intention to say anything against the man. I want to give an objective characterization. He is a distinguished scholar of theology, has studied widely and his research in the domain of theology has made him very learned. Yet it has not made him awake and alert to what constitutes true reality. As professor of theology his task is to speak about religion, scripture and also about veneration and supersensible powers. This, for a modern professor of theology, is a rather uncomfortable task. Such learned men much prefer to speak about experiencing religion as such, about how it feels merely to approach the spiritual. This professor, as others like him, has a certain fear of the spiritual world, fear of defining or describing it in actual words and concepts. I have often spoken about this fear which is purely ahrimanic in origin. This professor has an inkling that he will meet Ahriman once he penetrates the material world and enters the spiritual world. He would then have to overcome Ahriman.

Here we see someone who as a theologian looks upon the beauty and the greatness of nature as a manifestation of the divine. But this aspect of nature he will not investigate for it is the beings of the Higher Hierarchies who reveal themselves through nature and to speak of them is not “scientific.” Nevertheless he does want to investigate the soul's religious experiences. However, in attempting investigation of this kind, without any wish to enter the spiritual world itself, one very easily succumbs instead to the very soul condition one is apt to experience when confronting Ahriman: the condition of fear. The religious experience of this theologian consists therefore partly of fear, of timidity in face of the unknown. The last thing he wants is to make the unknown into the known. He presumes that timidity and fear of the unknown—which stems from ahrimanic beings—is part and parcel of religious experience.

It is because he wants to describe the soul's religious experience but refuses to enter the realm of the Hierarchies who live behind the sense world that Ahriman darkens his comprehension of the spiritual world. Through the ahrimanic temptation the spiritual world appears as “the great unknown,” as “the irrational” and religious experience is confused with the “mystery of fear.”—Nor is that all, for just as Ahriman is waiting without when one seeks the spiritual world through external nature so does Lucifer wait within. The modern theologian of whom we are speaking also refuses to seek the Hierarchies within. Here again Lucifer makes the realm of the Hierarchies appear as "the great unknown" which the theologian refuses to make into the known. Yet he wants to know the soul's experience, so here he meets the opposite of the mystery of fear, namely the “mystery of fascination.” This is a realm in which we experience attraction, we become fascinated. The theologian now has on the one hand the mystery of fear and on the other the mystery of fascination; for him these two components constitute religious life.

Naturally there are critics today who feel that it is a great step forward when theology has, at last, got away from speaking about spiritual beings; no longer speaks of what is rational but about what is irrational; i.e., the mystery of fear and the mystery of fascination, the two ways to avoid entering the unknown. The book: Über das Heilige (About the Sacred) by professor Otto²² of Breslau University is certain to attain fame. This book sets out to derationalize everything to do with religious experience. It sets out to make everything vague, to make all feelings indefinite partly through fear of the unknown and also through fascination for the unknown. This view of religious life is certain to attract attention. People are bound to say that here, at last, the old fashioned idea of speaking about the spiritual world is done away with.

Anyone knowing something of Anthroposophy will recognize that in the case of this scholar there is a condition of dimmed consciousness. Such conditions frequently occur; philologists and researchers often fall into states of dimmed consciousness, especially when their investigations are within a limited field. In such conditions Ahriman and Lucifer have access to them. And why should Ahriman not prevent such a researcher from beholding the spiritual world by deluding him through the mystery of fear? And why should Lucifer not delude him through the mystery of fascination? There is no other remedy than clear awareness of the roles played by Ahriman and Lucifer, otherwise one is merely wallowing in nebulous feelings. Certainly feeling is a powerful element of the soul's life which should not be artificially suppressed by the intellect, but that is something different altogether from allowing a surge of indefinite feeling to obscure every concrete insight into the spiritual world.

One is reminded in this connection of something said by Hegel,²⁴ though it was cynical and purely speculative. Hegel was referring to Schleiermacher's²³ famous definition of religious feeling which, according to him, consisted of utter and complete dependence. This definition is not false but that is not the point. Hegel, who above all wanted to lead man to clear concepts and concrete views and certainly not to feelings of dependence, declared that if utter dependence was a criterion for being religious then a dog would be the best Christian. Similarly if fear is the criterion for religious feelings then one need only suffer an attack of hydrophobia in order to experience intensely the mystery of fear.

What I am bringing up in these lectures must be considered, not so much according to its theoretical content but rather as an indication of the kind of inner attitude which is indispensable if one wants to observe the conditions in the world as they truly are. And it is so very important to do so. No matter where or how one is placed in life one can either observe appropriately or be inappropriately asleep. What surges and pulsates through life comes to expression in small issues as well as in big ones and can be observed everywhere.

We are at the beginning of a time when it will be of particular importance that things I have indicated in these last lectures are kept very much in mind. Many people do arrive at awareness of a universal Godhead or a universal spirituality. Yet, as I demonstrated when I spoke about his article “Reason and Knowledge,” even someone of the stature of Hermann Bahr does not arrive at any real awareness of Christ. He allies himself with the most prominent Christian institution of the day, that of Rome. But despite all he says there is no sign in his “Reason and Knowledge” of any conscious search for the Christ Impulse. Yet the most pressing need in our time is to gain an ever clearer understanding of the Christ impulse.

In the course of the 19th Century there was a great upsurge of natural-scientific thinking and all its attendant results. One of the first results was theoretical materialism accompanied by atheism. It can be said that the materialists of the 19th Century positively revelled in atheism. But such tendencies are apt to reverse and the same kind of thinking which made human beings atheists—due to certain luciferic-ahrimanic impulses at work during the first upsurge of natural science—will make them pious once the first glow has faded. The teachings of Darwin can make people God-fearing as easily as it can make them atheists, it all depends which side of the coin turns up. What no one can become through Darwinism is a Christian; nor is that possible through natural science if one remains within its limits. To become a Christian something quite different is required; namely, an understanding of a certain fundamental attitude of soul. What exactly is meant?

Kant said that the world is our mental picture, for the mental pictures we make of the world are formed according to the way we are organized. I may mention, not for personal but for factual reasons, that this Kantianism is completely refuted in my books Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom. These works set out to show that when we form concepts about the world, and elaborate them mentally, we are not alienating ourselves from reality. We are born into a physical body to enable us to see objects through our eyes and hear them through our ears and so on. What is disclosed to us through our senses is not full reality, it is only half reality. This I also stressed in my book Riddles of Philosophy. It is just because we are organized the way we are that the world, seen through our senses, is in a certain sense what Orientals call Maya. In the activity of forming mental pictures of the world we add, by means of thoughts, that which we suppressed through the body. This is the relation between true reality and knowledge. The task of real knowledge and therefore real science is to turn half reality; i.e., semblance, into the complete reality. The world, as it first appears through our senses, is for us incomplete. This incompleteness is not due to the world but to us, and we, through our mental activity, restore it to full reality. These thoughts I venture to call Pauline thoughts in the realm of epistemology. For it is truly nothing else than carrying into the realm of philosophic epistemology, the Pauline epistemology that man, when he came into the world through the first Adam, beheld an inferior aspect of the world; its true form he would experience only in what he will become through Christ.

The introduction of theological formulae into epistemology is not the point; what matters is the kind of thinking employed. I venture to say that, though my Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom are philosophic works, the Pauline spirit lives in them. A bridge can be built from this philosophy to the Christ Spirit; just as a bridge can be built from natural science to the Father Spirit. By means of natural-scientific thinking the Christ Spirit cannot be attained. Consequently as long as Kantianism prevails in philosophy, representing as it does a viewpoint that belongs to pre-Christian times, philosophy will continue to cloud the issue of Christianity.

So you see that everything that happens, everything that is done in the world must be observed and understood on a deeper level. It is necessary, when assessing literary works today, to keep in view not only their verbal content but also the whole direction of the ideas employed. One must be able to evaluate what is fruitful in such works and what must be superceded. Then one will also find entry into those spheres which alone enables one to stay awake in the true sense. The terrible events taking place in our time must be seen as external symptoms, the real change of direction must start from within.

Let me mention in conclusion that before 1914 I pointed out how confused were the statements made by Woodrow Wilson.²⁵ At that time I was completely alone in that view. What I said can be found in a course of lectures I gave at Helsingfors in May and June 1913. At that time Woodrow Wilson had the literary world at his feet. Only certain writings of his had been translated into other languages and much was said about his “great, noble and unbiased” mind. Those who were of that opinion speak differently now; but whether insight or something different brought about the change of view is open to question. What is important now is to recognize that because spiritual science is directly related to true reality it enables one to form appropriate judgements. This is an urgent need in view of the empty abstraction on which most judgements are based at present. An example of the latter is Der Geistgehalt dieses Krieges (The Spiritual Import of this War) by George Simmel. It is an ingenious presentation and a prime example of ideas from which all content has been extracted. To read it is comparable to eating an orange from which all juice has been squeezed out. Yet the book was written by a distinguished philosopher and innovator of modern views. At the Berlin university he had a large following; the fact that he never had a thought worthy of the name did nothing to diminish his fame.

• 20. Wladimir Alexandrowitsch Suchomlinoff 1848–1926 Russian General
• 21. Max Dessoir 1867–1947 Philosopher and Psychologist
• 22. Rudolf Otto 1869–1937
• 24. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831 German Philosopher
• 23. Friedrich Schleiermacher 1768–1834 Theologian and Philosopher
• 25. Woodrow Wilson 1856–1924 Professor of Philosophy, President of the U.S.A. 1913–1921

When spiritual science investigates mankind's evolution it arrives at results which in many respects differ considerably from those presented by natural science. This applies more especially to the human soul. The view obtained through spiritual knowledge of the human soul's evolution during hundreds and thousands of years differs from the view that is possible merely through natural-scientific investigation. Looking back into earlier ages we recognize that man once possessed atavistic clairvoyance and that this made his consciousness different from what it is today. However, we must also recognize that a residue of this clairvoyance persisted right into later centuries to a far greater extent than is realized. It is particularly important to be aware of the fact that right up to the 14th, 15th, 16th and even into the 17th century a vestige of the ancient clairvoyance was still in evidence. Not with its former strength, it is true, but although weakened, it was clearly a remnant of the former atavistic clairvoyance and could be encountered over the greater part of the earth.

I have spoken in earlier lectures of the fact that even today there are people who possess atavistic clairvoyance. The reason not much is known about it is because people are usually too embarrassed to confess to their fellow men that revelations from spiritual realms enter their consciousness. I described some instances of this kind in the last lecture. However, the difference is very great between what people could still experience directly from the spiritual world in the 16th and 17th centuries and what is possible since then. And even in the 17th century most people would not have been able to describe what appeared to their clairvoyant vision to the extent of being able to say that they had seen such and such a being. Their consciousness in spiritual experiences was not strong enough to grasp the situation sufficiently to form mental pictures of it. But though the consciousness was subdued, spiritual beings did still enter into man's will, into his feeling and also into his conceptual life. This was the case to a far greater extent than is imagined today. At the present time it is really extraordinarily difficult for someone who is able to look into the spiritual world and is conversant with the nature of what is to be experienced there, to speak freely about it to his fellow men. As I have often mentioned, one's contemporaries would receive too great a shock were one to describe certain, even elementary, facts concerning man's relationship to the spiritual world. Naturally it can cause clashes of views when an initiate, from his knowledge of the spiritual world, is obliged to say the very opposite to what his contemporaries, owing to their materialistic convictions, can accept as truth.

This situation had not yet arisen in the 14th, 15th, 16th or even 17th centuries. Much of the literature from this period is interpreted quite wrongly. This is not only because modern people think they know better than their predecessors, they also no longer understand their attitude to life. This fact comes to expression in curious ways. For example it is quite extraordinary to witness the way modern philosophers, in their writings or when lecturing, castigate the Scholastics of the Middle Ages. They go out of their way to demonstrate how far they themselves have advanced beyond i what they see as prejudiced, pedantic and narrow ideas of the Scholastics. But in truth, compared to the Scholastics, the modern philosophers are incredibly ignorant and they completely misunderstand the Scholastics. What is not realized is that at the time of Thomism, when a philosopher was engaged in the subtle art of ideation, of defining and elaborating the finer points, he was in contact with the spiritual world. It must be realized that for example Thomas Aquinas,²⁶ in the 13th Century, attained the concepts and ideas he elaborated in his writings in a completely different way from the way ideas are acquired today. One must think of his books as being inspired by a spirit from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi and that he recorded what came from a higher consciousness.

A modern philosopher would find dreadful the idea of having to sit down and wait till his Angel inspired him before writing what he was to communicate to the world; that with his Angel by his side he was to be the mouthpiece, the physical human mediator for what the Angel proclaimed concerning a higher world. Yet in no other way is it possible to understand what is coming into being, what is becoming. What I am now saying is of the greatest importance and I beg you to take special note of it. Only by listening to what is inspired into us or vouchsafed through Imagination can we come to understand what is coming into being. In our ordinary consciousness, since the 16th, 17th but especially since the 18th century, we have no relationship whatever to what is evolving, coming into existence. We look directly at things, but how much of what we see do we take into our consciousness? Let us say we look at a blossoming rose; in no instance, at no moment do we see the actual coming-into-being of the rose. From the formation of the seed to the extinction of the rose what we see is the dying, the fading away. That we see the red rose at all is due to the fact that we grasp its dying aspect. The coming-into-being aspect of things can be grasped only if one is able to listen to higher beings or receive impressions from them. No one, except higher beings who at present do not incarnate in a physical body, can perceive the becoming of the rose. In the very lowest realm of perception, the subjective light, which is almost as dull as the old clairvoyance was and, when it occurs, still is, do we see something of the becoming of the rose. But not when we look at it with physical eyes and grasp what we see conceptually.

This illustrates that an essential characteristic of our materialistic age is that only what is dying, what is going towards extinction, enters our consciousness. That was not the case at the time of the Scholastics nor even in the 17th century.

In the early part of the 17th century a little-known philosopher, Henry More,²⁷ born 1614, lived in England. When we look at his external life we see him as a living proof that man does not develop his individuality from inherited qualities alone. He brings with him characteristics, not found in parents or earlier ancestors, from former lives on earth. Henry More's parents and relations were all strict orthodox Calvinists, but already as a small boy he fought Zwingli's rigid teaching of predestination. Henry More rejected it emphatically although no one in his environment maintained anything contrary to this rigid doctrine. He had also another distinguishing characteristic. When one studies his writings, which are very interesting, one discovers the remarkable fact that he spoke of the inner presence of the spiritual world in human consciousness quite differently from the way people spoke of it later. He was a philosopher of the 17th century yet he knew that only through a more receptive consciousness than the ordinary one which only grasps the dying aspect, can man unite with that living reality which expresses itself in inspired consciousness as processes of becoming. In such inspired consciousness man can know about the processes of becoming whereas otherwise he can know only about what is connected with processes of dying. What is perceived everywhere through present-day consciousness is the dying aspects of things and even Henry More was not altogether clear that he had communed with spiritual beings. When he attempted to grasp his experiences in conceptual form; i.e. form mental pictures of them, these pictures would vanish in the very process of forming them just like a dream vanishes as we wake up. Thus he could not bring his experience of meeting spiritual beings into clear consciousness; he would forget as we forget a dream. Only dimly was he aware of their presence in his inner life but the effect of these experiences remained with him.

A very interesting thought, well known to us, was expressed also by Henry More. The thought that if one wants to reach certain higher knowledge one must learn to regard one's whole being as a member of a higher organism. Just as a finger is a member of the hand and loses its existence if separated from the hand, so too is man nothing, if torn out of his organic connection with the whole cosmos. With the finger this is more obvious. However if the finger could walk freely over our body it might well also succumb to the illusion of being an independent organism. Certainly the earth is there for man, but man is equally, in the adjoining spiritual world, a member of the greater organism of the earth. Man cannot tear himself out of this connection anymore than the finger can tear itself from the hand. I have often expressed this thought as an antidote to man's misplaced and all too prevalent conceit. In Henry More it rose as a sudden revelation. The reason was because he did have a dim knowledge, like a half-forgotten dream, of man's interconnection with the whole cosmos although he could not bring it into conscious conceptual form.

When one tries to discover what helped Henry More to formulate what lived so beautifully in his soul one finds that he had been deeply impressed by a certain booklet. This small book: the “Theologia Germanica” had also made a great impression on someone else; namely Luther²⁸ who made it available to wider circles in Germany. Henry More became a student of the “Theologia Germanica” by “the man from Frankfurth.” You will find more on this subject in my book “Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.”

The question may have arisen in your mind why it should be that in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and even 17th centuries people appear who know of the spiritual world through direct communion. The reason is the following: Those who in these centuries knew most about man's connection with the spiritual world had been on earth, if not in their last incarnation then as a rule in the last but one, at a time when preparation for Christianity was being made in the secret schools, in the Mysteries. Individuals such as Henry More were present on earth in the centuries prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. They then had an intermediate incarnation in the 7th, 8th or 9th century but this later incarnation had much less impact on them than that received in the previous one from the teaching in the mysteries. These teachings, preparing for the Mystery of Golgotha, made a deeper, more intense, impression on their soul. That is why so much of great significance was said concerning Christianity during those later centuries. Through their communion with the spiritual world these individuals derived an insight into the world's coming-into-being which, since the 17th century has no longer been possible. From then onwards one had to draw ever more on external accounts alone; these accounts, however, only describe what is in the process of decline. Spiritual knowledge is needed to bring insight once more to what is in the process of becoming. The preparation for Christianity, which lasted more than half a millennium during the tragic centuries leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha, made an enormous impression on these spirits. What they carried over into the later incarnation was an impulse of feeling, an inner mood of soul which they were able to give conceptual form.

European cultural development, between the 14th and 17th centuries, takes on a deeper significance when studied with this background in mind. One comes to realize that very spiritual concepts and ideas concerning Christianity and the Bible are to be found in this period. These concepts and ideas often seem strange today because they originated from spiritual experiences. To turn his attention to the essential aspect of that period is of special interest for man today. The period between the 14th and 17th centuries is really like a mighty retrospect. Forces were still present in man's soul through which experience could arise of the surging weaving life of the spiritual world. We enter the minds of those who lived in that period when, in contemplating them, we do not forget this retrospective quality of their consciousness.

If for example we want to understand Luther it is essential to keep in mind what I have just said. Recently a very interesting book: Luther's Creed by Ricarda Huch²⁹ has appeared. The reason why the book is so interesting is mainly because it is written completely out of present-day consciousness; that it is also inadequate makes it somewhat disappointing. The periodical: “North and South” contains in the July issue an article about this book entitled: “Ricarda Huch and the Devil.” The article points out that with our consciousness as it is today we cannot really comprehend the way man's mind worked in an earlier epoch. This fact makes it all the more interesting to see how Ricarda Huch deals with Luther's belief in demons. Unlike those who, when requested for an opinion concerning Luther's belief in demons, are too cowardly to voice one, she tries to treat him fairly. Others usually dismiss the issue by saying: Well, Luther was certainly a great man but his talk about demons, his belief in the devil stemmed from the fact that he shared the general superstitions of his time.

An opinion of this kind is just about as helpful as that of the honest professor who, reading with his students what Lessing had written about a drama performance, explained that Lessing had not really been able to think through what he had written; and the professor added: “Well, if only I myself had more time!” It is through this kind of superior attitude that it is concluded that Luther had shared in the superstition of his time. The fact is that no one can understand Luther who does not realize that what, out of the spirit and consciousness of his time, was called “the devil”—we would say Ahriman and Lucifer—was for him actual spiritual experience. When he spoke of these matters at Wartburg or anywhere else it was always from direct experience. Try to compare and bring together what Luther says and you will inevitably come to the conviction that only someone who has actually seen the devil, who has met him in direct experience, can speak as Luther did. Moreover he was well aware that: “Small folk never see the devil even when he has them by the collar.” Ricarda Huch agrees, with much good will but purely theoretically, against the superior attitude of the academics who, in their cleverness, know that the devil does not exist. They conclude that Luther was superstitious as were others at his time and one must excuse and forgive the great man.

Ricarda Huch does not agree with those who hold such a superior view of great spirits of the past. However it is obvious that she has no personal experience of what the devil looks like. She does believe in him although she has never seen him; so how does she visualize the devil? She believes in his existence because she knows that there are things which neither natural science nor physiology can explain, things which must come from the devil. She too feels that some excuses must be made for Luther for she says: "One ought not to imagine that Luther believed the devil walked about the streets complete with horns and tail." However, like others, she sees what she calls the devil as a combination of certain evil traits and characteristics such as stupidity, pride, untruthfulness and so on. But these are mere abstract concepts and Ricarda Huch thought Luther used his pictorial expressions in that sense. Luther was obliged to use pictures because there is no other way to express spiritual experiences. Yet he was directly acquainted with the devil through the inner battles which unavoidably must be fought when man comes face to face with the devil.

Luther clothed his experiences in pictures in the way one otherwise clothes them in words. Only the most obtuse thinkers could possibly maintain that the words one uses to depict an event contain the event itself. Yet this is precisely the objection levelled against me by professor Dessoir when he says that I have derived the various stages of mankind's evolution, not from reality, but from mental pictures. Such things are rather prevalent; in this particular case it stems from lack of insight, from utter ignorance. In the second chapter of my forthcoming book, dealing especially with moral corruption in academic circles, you will see what kind of people are among those who teach in public places of learning. These people who help shape the present, contribute to its dreadful miseries. They also create a situation in which the Royal Academy of Science awards its prize to the shoddy history of psychology submitted by Dessoir. If you read what Dessoir's colleagues have themselves said about this slatternly superficial treatise you will get an idea of the kind of literature that circulates and even wins awards in the academic world.

Luther lived at a time when the possibility still existed to have awareness of the spiritual world. All the devilry of Ahriman he experienced directly; he could not put these experiences into ordinary words because words are designed for physical things. Spiritual experiences must be described in pictures, in Imaginations. However, Imagination does express the reality of what is perceived and experienced super-sensibly. This Ricarda Huch does not understand. She thinks that though Luther spoke of the devil one must not take it to mean that when someone with spiritual sight comes among people he will, in numerous cases, find Ahriman, hunchbacked and with horns, looking at him from where he sits firmly entrenched between their shoulders. But Luther's descriptions were based on experience, and the pictures he uses are his way of describing these experiences. His personality was not such a gentle one as that of Ricarda Huch who believes he merely used symbolic pictures for man's evil upsurging passions.

One can ask what it is that gives Luther's doctrine—as it is usually called—the power it has. The answer lies in the fact that it is no mere doctrine, it must be understood very differently if one is to do it justice. In one's imagination Luther, standing there in the 17th Century, must be visualized as looking back with inner sight to a time when communion was being cultivated with the spiritual world, to a time when he himself cultivated such communion precisely in the realm of the ahrimanic. To recognize Ahriman is to free oneself from him; the danger lies in not recognizing him—you can read more about this aspect of Ahriman in my Four Mystery Dramas. To come face to face with Ahriman, the way Luther did, is to set oneself free. What Luther says can seem incomprehensible unless one recognizes that he is describing actual experiences; when it is realized then the power of his words is greatly enhanced. Even when we find certain aspects of what he said unpalatable his words strike us as genuine because he saw things in a much wider context than is normally possible today.

It is an interesting and highly significant phenomenon that Luther should appear, embodying the fruits of what was taught in the pre-Christian Mysteries. Luther was one of the greatest participants in those Mysteries that prepared the way for the founding of Christianity. What he absorbed in these Mysteries remained quite unimpaired by the later intermediate incarnation and was the source and strength of his power in his incarnation as Luther. But what was Luther's most significant revelation concerning his direct experience of Ahriman?

We must keep in mind that the essentially ahrimanic age begins only after Luther. Though people are not aware of it, present-day natural-scientific knowledge is saturated by Ahriman. The characteristic feature of today's materialistic outlook is that every concept is prompted by Ahriman. Luther was destined, at a significant turning point to make man aware of this fact. However when someone is able to look into the spiritual world he sees things in a different light from those who cannot do so. Furthermore the spiritual world affects man differently once he becomes conscious of it.

We begin to understand Luther's peculiar position once we realize that the powerful force he brought over from an earlier evolutionary stage could not be effective in later epochs. He was destined to rescue for mankind a view of Christianity before it had been weakened by unrecognized ahrimanic influences. That is the reason for the breadth of his vision and the strength of his consciousness of Ahriman.

Someone once wrote a book in which he had collected all the contradictions to be found in Luther's writings. Luther read the book and wrote a reply which is included in a letter to Melanchthon. Luther's comment was: “The silly ass only speaks of contradictions because he understands neither side of a contradiction, he does not understand that one can honour someone as a Prince yet at the same time speak of him as a devil and oppose him.”—Luther's letter to Melanchthon, where he speaks of this, is most interesting, for it also reveals his relationship to his own time. He used other expressions which would not be used today but are entirely comprehensible in view of his acquaintance with the spiritual world. These expressions are not, as historians suggest, merely a product of his time. Those who call Luther's expressions cynical or frivolous do so out of their own cynicism or frivolity.

What is important in relation to these things is to recognize that individual aspects of something may recur, although the greater issue itself is not repeated. This applies also to Scholasticism; people will only learn to relate to it when they rediscover in it the more subtly differentiated thinking than the one cultivated today. The way the spirit came to expression in Luther will never be repeated. He must be accepted just as he is, as a historical phenomenon. It would be a mistake to imagine that anyone could repeat Luther's life. What one should do is to make so thorough a study of Luther, as he appears in history, that one comes to recognize what it was that revealed itself through him in this particular incarnation. One must attempt to see beyond the individual who was active in the mysteries preparing for Christianity and then had an intermediate incarnation before appearing as Luther. We need to see that we are not dealing here only with a certain individuality but that in this one phenomenon the whole trend and law of mankind's evolution is expressed. It could happen because of his former conscious experience—even though as Luther this knowledge had become subconscious—of that realm where he encountered the devil; i.e., Ahriman.

In general Luther is seen the way academics see him: theologians are usually academics. His direct experience of the spiritual world is disregarded and his talk of the devil is seen as the weakness of a great man. But in truth the weakness lies in those who speak in this way about Luther.

Then came—and here we see how evolution runs its course—the time after Luther when Ahriman permeated the materialistic view of life. Though man was not conscious of it this was the case especially in the 19th Century. From the eastern part of Europe the possibility will first emerge for man to know once more the realm he enters when he attains insight beyond the physical plane. This seems a strange fact when we at present look towards the East. We see there aspects revealing both the baseness and the greatness of Russian nature. Over several years we have described what is preparing itself in Russia. It is indeed a remarkable experience to watch what takes place there; one has to say that these people are children still. They really are children and when they are not children they are possessed.

How can one escape the realization that Kerensky³⁰ is possessed? Naturally he considers himself far above such a superstitious idea that Ahriman has taken possession of him. But Ahriman has learned to produce from Western science a thinking which is utterly alien to the East, alien because it is a thinking related only to processes of dying. Not only does Western thinking understand nothing about the Russian people; Easterners themselves—that is, the leading people in the East—who try to judge Russians with Western thinking do not understand the Russians. There is in the Russian people still something childlike, something that points to the future. And in the future it is destined to develop into the ability to look once more into the spiritual world, to develop a relationship once more with the spiritual world.

What is preparing in Russia for the future is in complete contrast to the preparations that were made for our own epoch at the time of the Great Luther. Our age looks back, it makes manifest a force working from the past. We are looking at something very remarkable in the contrast between Luther's experience of his time and for example the childlike experience of a Russian like Soloviev³¹ during the time leading up to the revolution. We are seeing two opposite poles which are related as North to South, or if an abstract comparison is wanted, as positive and negative electricity. Two opposite directions of thoughts and views; unable to understand each other. It is obvious from the way Soloviev speaks that he is remote from any understanding of Luther, and if we remain with Luther it is quite impossible to understand Soloviev. We must widen our horizon to encompass both positive and negative.

I wanted to place these important issues before you. When next we meet I shall attempt to present Luther as a self-contained individuality—not only as he appeared in his time but as he appears within mankind's evolution as a whole—from a point of view obtainable only through Anthroposophy.

• 26. Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274 Scholastic Philosopher
• 27. Henry More 1614–1687 English Philosopher.
• 28. Martin Luther 1483–1546 Inaugurator of German Reformation
• 29. Ricarda Huck 1864–1947
• 30. Alexander Feodorowitsch Kerensky b. 1881 Russian Politician
• 31. Wladimir Soloviev 1853–1900 Russian Philosopher and Poet